A facility that will pull carbon out of the air and deposit it underground believes new incentives will allow it to do so by the megaton at the end of the decade.
The Project Bison direct air carbon capture machinery is capable of storing 5 million tons of CO2 underground in specially approved wells in Wyoming, and the company believes it makes up the first realistic and scalable business model for carbon capture.
President Biden’s recent Inflation Reduction Act contains strong tax incentives to invest in direct air capture of CO2, such that companies like CarbonCapture managed to raise big money from investors for their Project Bison facility in Wyoming.
In particular, the tax write-off for a ton of carbon stored underground has been raised to $180 from $45.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have advised that large-scale removal of carbon from the atmosphere is needed to prevent the severe climate disruptions to society.
Project Bison is slated to be fully-operational by 2023 in a state that has long been a stronghold for fossil fuel industries.
Governor Mark Gordon told Reuters he has plans to make Wyoming a center of these kinds of technologies that can reduce the impact of fossil fuels in the state.
“We’re really trying to get ourselves positioned to be the place of first choice for industry as they emerge with new climate technologies,” he said.
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Quote of the Day: “Where there are bees there are flowers, and wherever there are flowers there is new life and hope.” – Christy Lefteri
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Author Jamil Jan Kochai tried for years to reconnect with his second grade teacher—a woman whom he credits with all the success he’s had in life.
A young immigrant who didn’t know any English, it was Mrs. Lung who stayed after hours every day in their Sacramento elementary school to teach Kochai one-on-one how to read and write—something she managed in just a year.
It was something Kochai never forgot, but after moving to new schools and districts, he lost track of her. The more Kochai’s career grew with success, the more he felt he had to reconnect with the special teacher who kickstarted his life as an author.
After many years, he finally got to thank Mrs. Lung, after a friend brought her to one of Kochai’s book readings.
“This is Susan Lung. She taught me to read and write in a single year when I was 7 years old,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’ve been looking for Susan, hoping to thank her in person.”
Let me tell you a story. This is Susan Lung. She taught me to read and write in a single year when I was 7 years old. I've been looking for Susan, hoping to thank her in person, for almost twenty years. And then she surprised me at my reading last night. pic.twitter.com/7YW2EPx1CO
It was more than ten years that Kochai had been looking for his former teacher, ten years where calling school districts, looking names and leads up on Google and social media, and visiting schoolhouses all proved fruitless.
He said he felt like a detective “running into another dead end,” as he explained in a Twitter thread.
When I found this photo in an old box ten years ago, I almost lost my mind when I saw that Mrs. Lung's first name wasn't there! I felt like a detective running into another deadend. It was so frustrating!! pic.twitter.com/wUd4CKxguX
“A few years earlier, after 99 Nights in Logar came out, someone reached out to me, out of the blue, on Facebook. It was Mrs. Lung’s husband!” he continued. “Apparently, Allen Lung heard about an article I wrote for LitHub where I mentioned Mrs. Lung. He asked me if I wanted to speak with her that night.”
They exchanged a phone call, but as it was during COVID-19 lockdowns, they decided not to meet face to face.
That moment finally came when, after years of turmoil and joyful events both in Kochai’s professional and family life, he was doing a book reading/signing event for his new released The Haunting of Hajji Hotak – And Other Stories when “Mrs. Lung’s husband, Allen, rushed up to me, introduced himself, and brought me over to Mrs. Lung, and seven-year-old-me finally got to hug my 2nd grade teacher again.”
A ferry boat with technology that filters all the particulate matter from its emissions is now boarding for service around the French coast.
The vessel keeps her passengers and the sea at large healthier thanks to filters that capture 99.9% of sulphur oxide fine particulates, allowing the Côte d’Azur to breathe easier.
If you’ve ever traveled by ferry or cruise around the Mediterranean’s islands, for example Caremar from Naples to Capri, you may have had the unfortunate opportunity to breathe in the black, sulphur oxide-laden smoke coming from the engine.
This contributes to substantial pollution of the sea via the deposition of these fine particulates into the water. La Piana, a ship designed by the French ferry company La Méridionale, has built-in filters modeled on those of ground-based waste incinerators or biomass power plants.
Sulphur oxides from the motor are emitted into a chamber of sodium bicarbonate, which destroy the particulates. The chamber is then emptied, and sent to a filter which captures them all. Once ashore a hazmat truck can cart the material away.
“The challenge for us was to make it suitable for the maritime sector,” said Christophe Seguinot, technical director of La Méridionale. “This involved making the device smaller and lighter, so it could be installed on board a ferry while leaving enough space for travelers.”
It departs from Marseilles, which suffers inordinately of air pollution coming from cruise ships. Marseilles is one of the most frequented ports for European cruise ships, all the more now that Venice has banned them from entering her canal. Recently, 50,000 citizens signed a petition to ban cruise ships from entering the New Port, but they’re likely to make an exception for La Piana.
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Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has taken a major step to help protect blue whales and other cetaceans living and feeding in the waters off the coast of Sri Lanka by altering shipping lanes to avoid their habitat.
A global leader in container shipping and logistics, MSC began in mid-2022 to voluntarily re-route its vessels passing by Sri Lanka, on a new course that is approximately 15 nautical miles to the south, in line with the advice of scientists and other key actors in the maritime sector.
The decision was based on research surveys completed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), with the World Trade Institute (WTI), Biosphere Foundation, University of Ruhuna (Sri Lanka), and supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Westbound ship traffic is now limited to a latitude between 05 30N and 05 35N, and eastbound traffic is limited to a latitude between 05 24N and 05 29N in order to avoid designated cetacean habitats.
– Released.
Sri Lanka lies in the Indian Ocean, between Asia and Europe, and the port of Colombo is a major transshipment hub for global trade.
The area off its southern coast is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and is also inhabited by large populations of whales, meaning that these animals may be at risk of colliding with ships.
Simulations have shown that moving the official shipping lane 15 nautical miles to the south could reduce the strike risk to blue whales by a whopping 95%. However, despite years of advocacy by scientists, the shipping industry and NGOs, the boundaries of the official shipping line have not been reassigned to reduce the risk of ship strikes on cetaceans.
MSC is now taking measures to protect marine wildlife seriously, from adapting shipping service networks to keep away from designated whale breeding and feeding grounds, to reducing vessel speed and re-routing ships to avoid reported marine wildlife populations.
“We believe that the commercial shipping sector has an important role to play in protecting cetaceans, specifically in helping to reduce the risk of ship collisions with whales,” said Stefania Lallai, Vice President Sustainability at MSC.
“MSC is proud to rank at or near the top of whale safety shipping rankings. However, we are not at all complacent. We believe that raising awareness of these issues and encouraging collaboration between industry, scientific bodies, civil society and governments is essential as we strive collectively to do more to minimize the risk of ship strikes.”
In Sri Lanka specifically, the liner shipping industry led by the World Shipping Council, of which MSC is a member, has advocated to create a new official marine traffic scheme that is fully separated from the blue whale feeding area.
It is hoped that this will soon become a reality, so all large-scale commercial marine traffic moves to the more southerly zone that MSC ships are now guided to follow. In the meantime, MSC urges all other ship operators to consider choosing a more southerly route past Sri Lanka, to significantly reduce the possibility of whale strikes.
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A Smokey Mountains tourist website has created an interactive map that allows you to see how the leaves change color across the United States.
While the map is updated by first-hand accounts of leaf color, the team behind it actually built an algorithm to take into account historical temperatures, precipitation levels and weather predictions.
An autumn road trip to see the leaves turn red, orange, and yellow, whether you live in Virginia, Wisconsin, Vermont or anywhere else, is not always easy to get right.
Fortunately the science of the leaving of leaves can be pretty accurate, since chemical changes that result in the autumn preparation can be measured reliably.
The Smokey Mountains 2022 Foliage Map is simple—just move the slider down the days and months and watch the United States turn yellow and red.
Smithsonian reports that this year’s forecast is a good one for Colorado’s ghee-yellow aspen trees, which turn the most yellow and last the longest with warmer temperatures and less rainfall.
October 3rd would probably be the best of all worlds for a trip to Washington state, with much of the state’s colors nearly peaking, but not so much so as to run into crowds of other leaf-lookers.
While the onset of pumpkin spice lattes and other treats in the grocery store might lead a family zooming up the Blue Ridge Parkway as soon as the nights turn crisp, the map this year asks patience of those in Appalachia, who should wait until around the 26th of October for peak color.
Trees shed their leaves to prepare for winter, everyone knows that, but what makes some leaves turn yellow and others brown? The colors come from phytonutrients and vary from species to species.
Leaves are green during summer due to the constant creation of chlorophyll, without which there would be autumn colors year-round.
Yellow leaves are flush with flavonols, an antioxidant in humans, and something present in all leaves but which can’t make the yellow hue until chlorophyll production ceases. Red leaves are expressing their anthocyanin content—think grape leaves. Just like our bodies, anthocyanins protect the leaves from damage.
Leaves with a lot of beta-carotenoids absorb blue and green photons and reflect them as yellow and reds, making them seem orange to our eyes.
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Quote of the Day: “It’s what’s in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy.” – Agatha Christie
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In Scotland there’s a woman who can smell changes in body odor corresponding to the presence or onset of Parkinson’s disease.
Keeping with Scotland’s decorated history of medical discoveries, this “curse and a benefit” is now being used to develop a fast test for Parkinson’s that involves simply scraping a cotton ball over the back of the neck for examination.
More than 40 years ago, Joy Milne noticed an abrupt change in the natural odor of her husband, Les, when he was 33-years-old.
She knew herself to have a supersensitive nose, someone who couldn’t go into the cleaning section of a supermarket, but 12 years later, Les was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in an already progressive state, and it got her thinking it was the cause.
In 2012, Les, a former-doctor, went to find someone who could investigate further the connection between scent and Parkinson’s alongside Joy.
That initial inquiry led them to a professor at the University of Edinburgh who formed a team to put Joy’s sense of smell to the test.
Believing that Parkinson’s caused damage to a kind of skin oil known as sebum, they let Joy smell the t-shirts of those who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and those who hadn’t. While she correctly identified which shirts belonged to the Parkinson’s patients, she guessed incorrectly one time—until 8 months later when the patient whose shirt it belonged to received a diagnoses of Parkinson’s.
A few years make all the difference
“I think it has to be detected far earlier,” Joy told The Guardian, “the same as cancer and diabetes, earlier diagnosis means far more efficient treatment and a better lifestyle for people.”
“It has been found that exercise and change of diet can make a phenomenal difference.”
The disease which causes progressive decline in parts of the brain related to motor-function, can be detected years before its symptoms become obvious, during which time treatments can greatly improve quality of life outcomes in the future.
Professor Perdita Barran at the University of Manchester has developed this line of inquiry, and in 2019 announced she and her team had identified molecules linked to the disease found in skin swabs, which are now the target of a new potential testing regime.
Sebum analyzed for Parkinson’s can show a potential positive result when the molecules of these oils are subject to mass-spectrometry.
“At the moment, there are no cures for Parkinson’s but a confirmatory diagnostic would allow them to get the right treatment and get the drugs that will help to alleviate their symptoms,” said Barran.
“What we are now doing is seeing if (hospital laboratories) can do what we’ve done in a research lab,” she added.
If it can be done, the test could then refer the patient to a consultant neurologist for a more in depth test.
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Two families of mice live in their own purpose-built homes at the end of a man’s garden— they’re hand-fed flowers each day and even have their own pub.
People get up to all kinds of interesting things in their later years, and Gez Robinson is no exception. He first created a wildlife area at the bottom of his garden to get into photography and that’s where he first found the new tenants.
From that moment on he would sit outside with them for hours, feeding them every day and even began making little houses from nest boxes.
The 61-year-old grandfather, with his sweet videos and wholesome commentaries saw him rise to TikTok fame, and now he has more than 40,000 followers regularly tuning in.
The videos show some of Gez’s adorable daily feeding times with the mice, who despite having a reputation for garbage, can be seen eagerly devouring flowers.
– SWNS– SWNS
“In 2020 I first spotted a mouse on the deck next to the brambles, sat there nibbling a sunflower seed,” said Gez in his charming Yorkshireman voice. “The rest was history!”
“I started putting them on social media and two years I have thousands of followers. I remember my grandson Noah, 10, once shouting ‘grandad’s gone viral!'”
Gez said he spends four to five hours each day outside with the mice, and even livestreams his time with them.
He has named the two families—the ‘Honeysuckle family’ live in the logpile, while the ‘Bramble family’ live near the brambles in a stone wall.
“It’s a bit of an obsession,” he admits. “I made little houses converted from nest boxes for them. I comment on them and talk to the mice all the time.”
“I’ve had a few emails saying the mice have helped them through hard times, people say it’s quite uplifting and it makes them smile.”
“There are lots of people who don’t like mice—they used to say ‘I hate mice’, but I think I’ve changed the perception and given mice a voice.”
A high-tech sponge can absorb water vapor from the air and convert it to pure hydrogen for use in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and machines.
This sponge uses electrolysis to extract pure hydrogen, and can be powered by solar or wind energy, producing renewable fuel from renewable electricity.
The only portable green fuel source that could replace diesel or kerosene at scale, pure hydrogen is not abundant in nature, and finding ways to produce it sustainably is the key to expanding its use in industry and transportation.
Vehicles can be equipped with hydrogen fuel cells, which combust the pure hydrogen with oxygen to create an effect similar to when fossil fuels are combusted, except the only emission is hydrogen plus oxygen—water.
Similar to those silica gel sachets you find in packaged goods, a team of chemical engineers in Australia have developed a hygroscopic gel which absorbs moisture from the air. Once inside the gel, it’s split via electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen.
Ten square feet of the material can produce 24 gallons of pure hydrogen every hour, and the scientists calculate that 100 square feet can replace natural gas for an entire family home.
“This module can work under a bone-dry environment with a relative humidity of 4%, overcoming water supply issues and producing green hydrogen sustainably with minimal impact to the environment,” the authors write. “The modules can be easily scaled to provide hydrogen to remote, (semi-) arid, and scattered areas.”
A man tracked down the teen knifeman who mugged his nephew and rather than hand him in, spoke to him about turning his life around.
After listening to the remorseful youth’s story, Winston Davis has been inundated with job offers for the lad to keep him away from crime.
It took Davis six weeks to track down the 16-year-old “frightened boy” who had mugged his own 12-year-old nephew on his way to buy a chocolate bar. They arranged to meet so that the teen could hand back the bag he had stolen, but it was then Davis discovered the young man had no parents, job, or education, and that against these odds he still wanted to be a computer engineer.
Their conversation was filmed and has now gone viral, sparking a flood of job offers for the lad.
Davis, who is also a charity worker, had called out for support and opportunities from his followers.
He received a huge response, and says it’s been amazing to receive loads of offers of apprenticeships, training, money, and mentoring.
“When it happened the lad that did it was gesturing to the knife on his leg, but you can see on camera that he hasn’t held it to his neck or anything, he just used it as a threat,” Davis recounts. “He told me he’s been in and out of detention centers and had no education and has literally been living in supported living.”
“I said to him, ‘look, I’ll help you if you return the bag.’ We made the agreement that he would go get the bag and come back the next day and fair play to him that’s exactly what he did.”
The fact that he brought the bag back, and chose not to turn off his phone and forget the whole thing said a lot about him, Davis thought.
Grabbing hold of the wheel
Davis went to the scene of the mugging after confirming the police were going to do very little. He was expecting to find an adult, but as Davis searched CCTV and doorbell camera footage near where the event took place and spoke to people in the area, he bumped into a kid who matched one of the pictures he had been given only to realize he was just a boy.
“Look, I know who you are, I know what you’ve done, and I can help you, but you’re going to have to return the bag,” Davis said, remembering the confrontation.
Afterwards Davis wrote to his social/charity work circles for help.
“Although what he did was completely wrong, he said he was broke and needed the money… he’s 16 years old and has no qualification.”
“Despite this he wants to work in computer engineering… this kid doesn’t need punishment, he needs help… if there is anyone that knows about career routes/training programs for him, please drop me a dm.”
As chairman of Southside Young Leaders Academy, a charity helping young African and Afro-Caribbean boys become leaders, Davis has dealt with many kids in the same situation, noting “sometimes people aren’t ready for whatever reason.”
“Sometimes children are so traumatized from what they’ve been through as young children that it’s really hard for them to have any connection or belief that they can do anything other than what they’ve been exposed to at such a young age.”
“I can see in this young man there’s something in him that wants to go on and do good. It’s just, can he see far enough into the future? To be able to take advantage of the good nature and goodwill of so many people?”
“Our prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop until we’re 25, and that’s all about decision making, so people make riskier behaviors because that isn’t developed. We’re writing them off because they do things they shouldn’t do at such a young age.”
“Like no let’s try to intervene with them, let’s try to help them make changes, and help them take a different path. Because that helps us as a society.”
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Quote of the Day: “When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful.” – Caroline Myss
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Inactivity after the age of 65 increases the risk of heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes according to new research from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
The study looked at walking speed, leg strength and balance to measure physical performance.
Known as the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), the study measures the ability to perform both basic and instrumental activities of daily living.
“Physical function in older adults predicts future cardiovascular disease beyond traditional heart disease risk factors, regardless of whether an individual has a history of cardiovascular disease,” said senior author of the study Dr. Kunihiro Matsushita, associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Division of Cardiology.
SPPB, analyzing data from 5,570 adults aged 75 on average, characterized people into three groups based on their test scores: low, intermediate and high.
After examining the association of SPPB scores with future heart attack, stroke, and heart failure—adjusting for major cardiovascular disease risk factors—the study found that 13 percent had low, 30% had intermediate, and 57% had high physical health scores.
During the eight years of the study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, 386 participants were diagnosed with a heart attack, 251 had a stroke, and there were 529 heart failure cases.
Those with low physical function scores were 47 percent more likely to experience at least one cardiovascular disease event.
The physical function score improved the risk prediction of cardiovascular disease outcomes beyond traditional cardiovascular risk factors.
“Older adults are at higher risk for falls and disability,” said Xiao Hu, lead author, and Research Data Coordinator. “The assessment of physical function may also inform the risk of these concerning conditions in older adults.”
Falls in older adults are associated with high injury rates, high medical care costs, and significant impact on quality of life.
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Pipes a million times thinner than a human hair could deliver personalized therapies to individual cells, according to new research.
The ‘world’s tiniest plumbing system’ could transform medicine by funneling drugs, proteins, or molecules to precisely targeted organs and tissue—without any risk of side-effects.
It comprises microscopic tubes that self-assemble and can connect themselves to different biostructures.
US scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland engineered a way that ensured the pipes are safe from infinitesimally small leaks.
“This study suggests very strongly it’s feasible to build nanotubes that don’t leak using these easy techniques for self-assembly, where we mix molecules in a solution and just let them form the structure we want,” said co-author Professor Rebecca Schulman.
“In our case, we can also attach these tubes to different endpoints to form something like plumbing.”
It’s a significant step toward creating the first network of its kind to combat a host of life-threatening diseases.
The team worked with tubes two million times smaller than an ant and a few microns long—equivalent to a dust particle.
They grew and repaired the tubes, enabling them to find and connect to specific cells. It is similar to an established technique that repurposes DNA as building blocks.
They make ‘nanopores’ to control the transport of chemicals across lab-grown lipids that mimic a cell’s membrane.
But short fittings alone can’t reach other tubes. The bio-inspired technology described in Science Advances address these sorts of problems.
“Building a long tube from a pore could allow molecules not only to cross the pore of a membrane that held the molecules inside a chamber or cell, but also to direct where those molecules go after leaving the cell,” said Schulman.
“We were able to build tubes extending from pores much longer than those that had been built before that could bring the transport of molecules along nanotube ‘highways’ close to reality.”
The nanotubes form using DNA strands woven between different double helices. Their structures have small gaps—similar to woven bamboo tubes called Chinese finger traps.
Co-author Yi Li, who published the research in Science Advances, capped the end of a pipe with special DNA ‘corks’ and turned on a faucet to make sure no water leaked out.
She then ran a solution of fluorescent molecules to track leaks and influx rates. The glowing molecules slid down through a chute like water.
“Now we can call this more of a plumbing system, because we’re directing the flow of certain materials or molecules across much longer distances using these channels,” said Li.
“We are able to control when to stop this flow using another DNA structure that very specifically binds to those channels to stop this transport, working as a valve or a plug.”
An elderly couple were among the final people to ever receive signed correspondence from the Queen after opening a card from her on the day she died.
Tricia Pont, 81, and her husband Ray, opened the card on the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary Thursday.
The couple, from Godalming in Surrey, first heard of the Queen’s illness while enjoying a celebratory lunch and later returned home to learn of her death.
The seniors said it was a day of “mixed emotions” and they would now cherish the
“precious and poignant” card from Her Majesty.
The hand-signed card read: “I am so pleased to know you are celebrating your Diamond Wedding Anniversary. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion.”
Ray, a retired surveyor, said, “It was our wedding anniversary having spent 60 years together and someone in the family decided they would like us to get a card from the Queen.
“I was so excited to open the card. I thought it would be such a lovely moment for our family… and it had a nice picture on the front.”
“We then went out to have lunch together and when we were there my phone pinged, we were told we should look online as something was wrong with the Queen.
“It makes the card even more precious and poignant as we were one of the last people to get correspondence from her.”
Card signed by Queen Elizabeth II – SWNS
The couple said they were tearful when they returned home and looked at the card.
It features a photograph of the Queen smiling which was taken on the Buckingham Palace balcony at her Diamond Jubilee in June.
“We are big supporters of her, she is a great role model for the whole nation and she was admired for her stoicism,” added Ray. “She was really committed.”
They agreed that the sudden death “really put a downer on the day”, but then they realized how privileged they were to be one of the last few people to get a card from her.
When Tricia was a child in 1947, she saw the Queen in London the night of her wedding to Prince Phillip. She later saw the monarch at a garden party for the Girl Guides Association in the late 1990s.
“I remember her on her wedding day and at the coronation. We stood on the railings at Buckingham Palace when they came out on the balcony,” said Tricia. “It was wonderful.”
“The Queen was just charming—so lovely and sparkly.”
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A sand artist has revealed her own unique tribute to the Queen after creating a giant portrait depicting her majesty’s postage stamp on a beach.
Claire Eason, 57, spent four hours painstakingly etching the amazing 65-foot image using a garden rake on Bamburgh beach in Northumberland.
“As I was filming with the drone the tide came in and I captured it just touching the image and I thought this looks like a goodbye,” said the retired family doctor from Sunderland.
“It’s been really touching to see people’s response, they have said it is a fitting farewell.”
Claire started a company called Soul 2 Sand to create the beach art for special occasions.
She said she chose the image of a first class stamp because it is one of the most recognizable of Queen Elizabeth.
Quote of the Day: “What is a challenge if not a real friend in disguise to strengthen us?” – Sri Chinmoy
Photo by: Cristian Palmer
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Marking the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, one social media poster dug all the way back to the tragedy of 9/11 to remind people that not even royal tradition is more sacred than an act of kindness.
After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, The Queen ordered the Royal Guard to break a centuries-old tradition, in order to play the US national anthem during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace in London.
The user on Reddit known as ‘ledgendary’ posted a video of the moment, saying The Queen was “attempting to provide some comfort to Americans who were stranded in London”.
The monarch, who died this week at age 95, made the decision to break the tradition, which dated back to 1660, and allow her guards to play a foreign country’s anthem outside of a state visit.
Seeing the moving moment, ABC news anchor Peter Jennings could barely keep it together after watching the news footage.
Eight in 10 Americans agree society puts too much value on appearing youthful, but the new poll also identified the benefits of getting older.
The survey of 2,000 adults examined perspectives around aging and found that most agree that in today’s world, there’s a negative bias around aging or the perception of being old—so much so that six in 10 avoid sharing their age for fear of being “judged” (61%).
Sharing their positive bias, three-quarters of the respondents agreed that age is not something to fight or fear, but rather an opportunity to live a more fulfilling and emotionally healthy life.
Furthermore, most have actually seen areas of their lives improve with age (71%), such as confidence (49%), their sense of self (45%) and their relationships with family members (44%).
In fact, most people who have outgrown their 20s say that they feel more fulfilled (69%) and satisfied (71%) with their lives today.
Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Great Lakes Wellness Collagen, the survey found that three in four people want to spend less time fighting aging and more time doing things they love.
“While ‘anti-aging’ has become the norm for quite some time, we’re starting to see a shift among Americans who realize aging is living,” said Jim Burkett, president of Great Lakes Wellness.
Two-thirds of respondents actually feel younger than they are—nearly a decade younger, on average.
The Top 4 Benefits of Aging:
–Learn new things about themselves or the world every year –Having more life experience –Gaining wisdom –Being more confident
What, then, is the secret to living well in your advancing years? 80% will tell you that a better attitude leads to more graceful aging.
Jupiter’s moon Europa – NASA/JPL/Caltech/SETI Institute
Water is the one thing all life on Earth needs, and the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what keeps our planet’s climate stable and hospitable. When scientists talk about where to search for signs of life throughout the galaxy, planets with water are always at the top of the list.
A new study suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock, probably embedded in rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.
“It was a surprise to see evidence for so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy,” said Rafael Luque, first author on the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. “It has enormous consequences for the search for habitable planets.”
Thanks to better telescope instruments, scientists are finding signs of more and more planets in distant solar systems. A larger sample size helps scientists identify demographic patterns—similar to how looking at the population of an entire town can reveal trends that are hard to see at an individual level.
Luque, along with co-author Enric Pallé of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and the University of La Laguna, decided to take a population-level look at a group of planets that are seen around a type of star called an M-dwarf. These stars are the most common stars we see around us in the galaxy, and scientists have catalogued dozens of planets around them so far.
But because stars are so much brighter than their planets, we cannot see the actual planets themselves. Instead, scientists detect faint signs of the planets’ effects on their stars—the shadow created when a planet crosses in front of its star, or the tiny tug on a star’s motion as a planet orbits. That means many questions remain about what these planets actually look like.
“The two different ways to discover planets each give you different information,” said Pallé. By catching the shadow created when a planet crosses in front of its star, scientists can find the diameter of the planet. By measuring the tiny gravitational pull that a planet exerts on a star, scientists can find its mass.
Jupiter’s moon Europa – NASA/JPL/Caltech/SETI Institute
Then, combining the two measurements, scientists can get a sense of the makeup of the planet. Perhaps it’s a big-but-airy planet made mostly out of gas like Jupiter, or a small, dense, rocky planet like Earth.
These analyses had been done for individual planets, but much more rarely for the entire known population of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy. As the scientists looked at the numbers—43 planets in all—they saw a surprising picture emerging.
The densities of a large percentage of the planets suggested that they were too light for their size to be made up of pure rock. Instead, these planets are probably something like half rock and half water, or another lighter molecule. Imagine the difference between picking up a bowling ball and a soccer ball: they’re roughly the same size, but one is made up of much lighter material.
It may be tempting to imagine these planets like something out of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld: entirely covered in deep oceans. However, these planets are so close to their suns that any water on the surface would exist in a supercritical gaseous phase, which would enlarge their radius. “But we don’t see that in the samples,” explained Luque. “That suggests the water is not in the form of surface ocean.”
Instead, the water could exist mixed into the rock or in pockets below the surface. Those conditions would be similar to Jupiter’s moon Europa, which is thought to have liquid water underground.
“I was shocked when I saw this analysis—I and a lot of people in the field assumed these were all dry, rocky planets,” said UChicago exoplanet scientist Jacob Bean, whose group Luque has joined to conduct further analyses.
The finding, published in the journal Science, matches a theory of exoplanet formation that had fallen out of favor in the past few years, which suggested that many planets form farther out in their solar systems and migrate inward over time. Imagine clumps of rock and ice forming together in the cold conditions far from a star, and then being pulled slowly inward by the star’s gravity.
Though the evidence is compelling, Bean said he and the other scientists would still like to see “smoking gun proof” that one of these planets is a water world. That’s something the scientists are hoping to do with JWST, NASA’s newly launched space telescope that is the successor to Hubble.
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