Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week by catching up on some science news you may have missed.
We’ll start out with a space update that we’ve all been waiting about nine months for…
[CLIP: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Re-Entry and Splashdown: “And splashdown Crew-9 is back on earth [cheering]”]
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Feltman: Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are finally back on Earth. The two NASA astronauts, who were meant to spend about a week on the International Space Station but have been there since June, splashed down in a SpaceX capsule last Tuesday evening. Welcome home, Butch and Suni!
If you’re wondering why it took so long to bring them back after their arrival vehicle’s initial technical difficulties, the answer isn’t very exciting—it basically came down to scheduling issues. First, NASA had to bump two other astronauts off an upcoming mission so that their return vehicle would have room for Butch and Suni. Once that mission made it to the station, it had to stay put until the next mission came up to relieve the prior crew of their duties. Space is hard, as folks so often say, and multiple ISS missions are bound to mean multiple delays.
In other space news, last week scientists unveiled images of a planetary system 130 light-years away snapped by the James Webb Space Telescope. In an exciting first, the JWST was able to directly capture images of carbon dioxide gas on an exoplanet. That means JWST lives up to its promise of sussing out the chemistry of planetary atmospheres from a distance. These observations suggest that the four planets of the system, known as HR 8799, were likely formed through a process called core accretion. That process starts with the gradual formation of solid cores, which go on to attract gas from inside a protoplanetary disk. It’s the same way Saturn and Jupiter formed. At 30 million years old or so, HR 8799 is a baby compared to our roughly 4.6-billion-year-old solar system, so studying these alien worlds could give us a glimpse into what our own gas giants looked like in their early days. And speaking of early days, when it comes to JWST the best is still yet to come. The space telescope was designed to last for at least five years, but the hope is that it can make it more than 20.
Now let’s catch up with the Environmental Protection Agency. In last week’s news roundup, I outlined EPA head Lee Zeldin’s plans to undo heaps of environmental legislation. I also mentioned his purported plan to cut 65 percent of the agency’s costs. Last week, thanks to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, we got a clearer picture of those prospective cost-cutting measures.
The New York Times reported last Monday that the EPA’s plan calls for firing up to 1,155 scientists, as well as getting rid of the Office of Research and Development. This is the EPA’s main science arm, which conducts research on environmental issues such as pollutants and their effects on humans. Zeldin said in a Fox Business appearance on Tuesday that the EPA was still “working through” cost-cutting decisions. Also on Tuesday, Representatives Valerie Foushee, Deborah Ross and Zoe Lofgren, who are all members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, put out a joint statement condemning the supposed plans. They argued that, considering the EPA’s obligation to use the best-available science in making its decisions, eliminating its main science branch would be illegal. If you like having clean air and water, you might consider calling up your own congressional reps to ask them to take a stand too.
Meanwhile last week President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, a platform he owns, that he was authorizing his administration to “immediately begin producing energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL.”
“Clean coal” is a nebulous term referring to technologies that make coal less polluting than it would be without those technologies. But there’s no way of handling coal that makes it a clean form of energy. There are a few facilities that now use carbon capture technology to mitigate coal’s impact on the environment, but this technology is expensive and lemme be very clear about this it doesn’t turn coal into a zero-carbon energy option. Coal is the most polluting source of energy. It releases heaps of carbon dioxide, contributes to environmental issues like acid rain and smog, and can cause lung disease.
On Truth Social, President Trump claimed that “Environmental Extremists” and “Thugs” had allowed other countries, particularly China, to gain economic advantages over the U.S. by opening new coal plants. While it’s true that China has opened new coal plants in recent years, it’s worth noting that the country’s percentage of electricity generated from coal is actually on the decline.
It’s also worth noting that last Wednesday the World Meteorological Organization reported that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are at an 800,000-year high. So yeah, consider calling your reps!
For no particular reason, I could use a little bit of a breather. Let’s just talk about animals for the rest of the episode.
First, have you ever wondered how seals avoid drowning? You totally should wonder that cause gray seals, for instance, can hold their breath for more than an hour at a time. A study published last Thursday in Science could help explain how. It turns out that gray seals can seemingly sense how much oxygen is in their blood at any given moment.
Like most mammals, humans don’t necessarily react to a lack of oxygen in the air. We’re much more sensitive to an uptick in our carbon dioxide levels, which prompts us to breathe more. If a gray seal started to get that panicky air-hunger feeling as soon as the saturation of CO2 in their blood started going up while they were holding their breath, they’d never get anything done. But it seems they’ve got a trick for that: just cutting out the middleman and sensing oxygen directly.
Scientists tested this by giving seals air with different levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide before the animals went for their dives. The researchers found that seals would dive for longer after inhaling more oxygen-rich air and would cut their dives short after getting less oxygen. When the seals inhaled air with high levels of carbon dioxide, it didn’t really change their dive length.
While this study looked at gray seals, they’re not even the most accomplished divers in the seal world. The northern elephant seal can dive for up to two hours at a time. It’s even possible that this oxygen-sensing trait came from a fairly distant ancestor that is applies to more than just mammals. After all, the emperor penguin can stay underwater for up to 27 minutes.
And speaking of penguins it turns out their poop causes a big ruckus among zooplankton world. In a study published last Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers zoomed in on the behavior of Antarctic krill. These tiny, shrimplike creatures are crucial members of the food chain, so they spend a lot of their time trying not to get eaten. Scientists already knew that krill used their sense of smell to react to things like food and pollution, so naturally they thought, “Why not try penguin poo?” Sure enough, when exposed to seawater containing guano in a tank, the little critters swam faster, pivoted direction more, and ate less algae. You might be asking yourself why scientists are interested in this crap. Like literally specifically this crap. But between krills’ spot on the food chain and their ability to sequester carbon by eating algae, these little guys can have a big impact on the ocean. Krill are already changing their behaviors due to climate change, sea ice loss and ocean acidification by moving further south.
And if you need a pick-me-up this week, just take a moment to be grateful you aren’t on penguin doody duty: researchers had to collect a couple ounces of the stuff for the study, and apparently it smells like rotten shellfish.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about the changing science of invasive plants. And stay tuned for a very special video episode on Friday. We’re giving you a tour of the cutting-edge lab where MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] scientists study and fabricate stuff at the nanoscale.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
