The spacecraft won’t obliterate Dimorphos, the moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos, but it’s large enough to leave an impact crater. If all goes well, DART will slightly change the motion of a celestial body in space in a stunning first.
The mission results could shape the way humans respond to any future space rocks with the potential to collide with the planet. Despite this extraordinary event taking place 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) away from Earth, we’ll get to see it play out in real time.
Monday’s encounter will reveal Dimorphos in striking detail.
In the last hour before impact, expected to occur at 7:14 p.m. ET, DART’s camera will send back images at a rate of one per second, providing a live stream of its approach. Pinpricks of light will slowly come into focus as Didymos and Dimorphos take shape.
The surface of Dimorphos will get sharper and sharper. And when DART slams into the moon at 13,421 miles per hour (21,600 kilometers per hour), our view will disappear.
Wish you could see the collision from another perspective? The Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube will act as DART’s photojournalist, following behind the spacecraft and capturing images and video that will show the whole story.
Dino-mite!
Fossil eggs are providing insight into what life was like for dinosaurs before a massive asteroid strike wiped them out.
Researchers studied more than 1,000 fossilized dinosaur eggs recovered from the Shanyang basin in central China. The eggs came from only two groups, the toothless oviraptors and duck-billed hadrosaurs, suggesting low biodiversity.
It’s possible that dinosaur species were already struggling to survive about 66 million years ago as their diversity waned.
Other researchers still think the asteroid strike was the true driver of dinosaur extinction, not to mention a series of massive volcanic eruptions — and they suggest that if those cataclysmic events hadn’t happened, dinosaurs might still rule the planet.
Curiosities
Researchers in China have cloned a wild Arctic wolf. Sinogene Biotechnology unveiled the female wolf pup, named Maya, on Monday — and the Beijing-based company is hoping this method could save other species.
Wildlife conservationists consider the Arctic wolf, like the ones at Harbin Polarland in Harbin, China, pictured above, at low risk of extinction, but the climate crisis and human encroachment could change that.
To create Maya, scientists applied the same technique used in 1996 that led to Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. The wolf pup was born from a surrogate beagle mother.
But some experts warn about the health and ethical concerns of controversial conservation efforts like cloning.
Across the universe
The James Webb Space Telescope’s new image of Neptune has showcased the most distant planet in our solar system and its hard-to-detect rings in a fresh light.
Webb also focused its instruments on the blinding light of Mars, one of the brightest objects in our night sky.
And don’t count out NASA’s InSight mission just yet. Despite gloomy predictions that the stationary lander would already have fallen silent on Mars, InSight is still operating. Listen to the sounds of space rocks crashing into Mars, as recorded by the lander.
Wild kingdom
Ever wondered what it might be like to experience the world as an animal?
Dogs socialize via scent, and eels discern their environment through electricity. Bats use echolocation to navigate.
All creatures live in their own “sensory bubble” called the umwelt, a species-specific reality that is crucial to their survival, according to award-winning science journalist Ed Yong.
You won’t want to miss this week’s episode of Chasing Life, a podcast hosted by CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He and Yongtake you on a journey through the mysterious senses that exist in the animal kingdom.
And can you guess how many ants live on Earth? Scientists shared a new estimate this week, and it boggles the mind.
Take note
Don’t miss these highlights:
— The Artemis I mega moon rocket met all of its objectives during a crucial fueling test despite some leaks. But the rocket won’t launch Tuesday as planned due to concerns over Tropical Storm Ian.
— Cue the pumpkin spice and everything nice: Fall is finally here for those who live in the Northern Hemisphere. Drought might have an impact on the foliage colors, depending on where you live.
— Astronomers have uncovered more about the origin of a fast radio burst in space, along with new mysteries.
And keep an eye on the night sky because Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in 59 years on Monday, appearing bigger and brighter.
Like what you’ve read? Oh, but there’s more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writers Ashley Strickland and Katie Hunt. They find wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.
It should have been simple for Magnus Carlsen, or at least as simple as a top-tier chess game can be. When the world chess champion sat down across from 19-year-old American Hans Niemann at the Sinquefield Cup earlier this month, he had the benefit of playing with the white pieces, he was on a 53-game unbeaten streak, and was facing someone who entered the tournament as the lowest-rated player.
Few were expecting an upset, but that’s just what happened.
Carlsen’s loss to Niemann in that game was unusual, but what followed was even more so. The next day, the world’s number one chess star withdrew from the tournament without explanation; only a short statement posted to Twitter and a meme.
“I’ve withdrawn from the tournament. I’ve always enjoyed playing in the @STLChessClub, and hope to be back in the future,” he wrote in a tweet, which was accompanied by a video clip of José Mourinho, saying, “I prefer really not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble.”
Carlsen didn’t say so explicitly himself, but his withdrawal and the cryptic video were interpreted as a veiled accusation of cheating against Niemann.
Niemann has vehemently denied the accusations against him, but the world of chess — which is its own ecosystem of players and teachers, YouTubers, streamers and fans — has been consumed by the drama ever since.
“Basically it seems like Magnus Carlsen thinks something’s not quite right with Hans Niemann,” said Levy Rozman, an international master and host of a popular chess-based YouTube channel, in a video. He described it as “likely the biggest chess scandal in history.”
Cheating in chess is as old as the game itself. But the rise of online play, coupled with the invention of chess engines powered by artificial intelligence that can calculate millions of possible moves in seconds, has led to an explosion in cheating in recent years. Chess.com, the most popular chess platform on the internet, calls cheating “the dirty not-so-secret of chess,” one that has “plagued online chess websites.” The site says it suspends around 500 accounts a day for cheating.
So, how was Niemann, who played Carlsen in person, supposed to have cheated? This is where things get weird. A theory reportedly from the depths of Reddit, which suggested Neimann used vibrating anal beads to receive move commands from an outside helper, was discussed as if it were a serious likelihood by grandmaster Eric Hansen on a livestream. Another theory suggested Niemann might be using a “tiny laser” that “draws an ultraviolet line on the board visible only through soecial [sic] contacts.”
Niemann had his own theory, positing in his post-match interview that Carlsen “was just so demoralized because he’s losing to an idiot like me. It must be embarrassing for the world champion to lose to me. I feel bad for him.”
What followed was something akin to a true crime drama. Niemann’s history was fiercely scrutinised online, his past games studied for anomalies and patterns.
Hikaru Nakamura, a chess grandmaster, former world number two and popular chess YouTuber, replayed the game between Carlsen and Niemann to look for moves that didn’t make sense. In other words, he looked for moves that could only have been prompted by artificial intelligence. “I’m really suss actually,” he said.
Greg Keener, a FIDE arbiter and assistant manager at The Marshall Chess Club, wrote in an analysis for the New York Times that Niemann’s Elo rating, which is based on a player’s playing record, rose more than 500 points since January 2021, describing it as “an increase so sharp many people don’t believe it is possible.”
In other words, Niemann’s meteoric rise was an underlying reason for many people’s suspicions.
The scandal only deepened when it emerged that Niemann, in an interview he gave to explain his game against Carlsen and defend himself against the accusations, admitted to cheating in online games when he was younger.
“I cheated on random games on Chess.com. I was confronted. I confessed. And this is the single biggest mistake of my life. And I am completely ashamed. I am telling the world because I don’t want misrepresentations and I don’t want rumours. I have never cheated in an over-the-board game. And other than when I was 12 years old I have never cheated in a tournament with prize money,” he said in an interview with the St Louis Chess Club.
“To give context, I was 16 years old and living alone in New York City at the heart of the pandemic and I was willing to do anything to grow my stream,” he added. “What I want people to know about this is that I am deeply, deeply sorry for my mistake. I know my actions have consequences and I suffered those consequences.”
Niemann went on to say that he would play naked to prove himself innocent against the accusations of him wearing devices on his body.
“If they want me to strip fully naked, I will do it. I don’t care. Because I know I am clean. You want me to play in a closed box with zero electronic transmission, I don’t care. I’m here to win and that is my goal regardless,” he said.
Niemann could not be reached for comment by The Independent.
Two days after that interview, Chess.com said in a statement that it had banned Niemann from the site, without going into further detail.
Still, the drama continued. Niemann and Carlsen met in another game, this time online, in a tournament called the Generation Cup. After one move, Carlsen resigned from the game and turned off his webcam.
“This is a bigger statement than the tweet, I think,” said the commentator.
The furor has threatened to derail the career of a young chess grandmaster before it had even really begun. Yet no one has yet been able to provide any concrete proof of his cheating.
After days of speculation, Chris Bird, the chief arbiter of the Sinquefield Cup, where the scandal began, said there had been no evidence of cheating.
“In response to the recent rumours circulating the chess world, I can confirm that we currently have no indication that any player has been playing unfairly in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup,” Bird said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The New York Times reported that he has been invited back to the next tournament at the club.
Hans Niemann, left, and Magnus Carlsen
(chess24.com/Getty)
Keener, in his analysis for the Times, also pointed to comments from Levon Aronian, an Armenian grandmaster who played in the same tournament and who defended Niemann in a postgame interview.
“Well, I think it quite often happens when young players play very well. There is all these accusations toward them. All of my colleagues are pretty much paranoid, “ he said in the interview.
There was an even more in-depth analysis by professor Ken Regan, described as the “world’s greatest expert on cheating detection in chess” by ChessBase, who analysed all of Niemann’s games from the last two years, online and offline.
“Niemann played well. But not too well,” he said in his verdict, which concluded that he did not cheat.
That might have been the end of the controversy. But Carlsen waded into the subject again this week in an interview.
“Unfortunately I cannot particularly speak on that,” Carlsen said when asked why he resigned from his last game with Niemann. “But, you know, people can draw their own conclusion and they certainly have.”
He then hinted that he may not remain cryptic for much longer.
“I hope to say a little bit more after the tournament,” he said.
The new baby island emerged in the southwest Pacific Ocean, where underwater volcanoes are plentiful. One of these submerged volcanoes awoke on September 10, spewing lava, steam, and ash, according to a statement from the NASA Earth Observatory.
Just eleven hours after the volcano began to erupt, a new island had emerged above the water’s surface, says NASA, which captured images of the nascent island with satellites.
The newborn island grew quickly in size, according to NASA. On September 14, researchers at Tonga Geological Services estimated the island covered just 4,000 square meters — around one acre.
But by September 20, the island had grown to cover 24,000 square meters, or around 6 acres.
The new island sits on the Home Reef seamount in the Central Tonga Islands, southwest of the archipelago’s Late Island.
You might not want to get too attached to the baby island: islands created by underwater volcanoes “are often short-lived,” says NASA. But sometimes the ephemeral islands can persist for years or even decades.
The Home Reef volcano was still erupting as of Friday, according to a Facebook post from the Tonga Geological Services. But the volcano’s activity “poses low risks to the Aviation Community and the residents of Vava’u and Ha’apai,” two island groups in central Tonga.
“No visible ash in the past 24 hours was reported,” added the agency. “All Mariners are advised to sail beyond 4km away from Home Reef until further notice.”
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, or DART, aims to see if this kind of kinetic impact can help deflect an asteroid posing a threat to Earth.
“We are moving an asteroid,” said Tom Statler, NASA program scientist for the DART mission. “We are changing the motion of a natural celestial body in space. Humanity has never done that before.”
Here’s what you need to know about this mission.
The DART spacecraft is about the size of a school bus. It has been traveling to reach its asteroid target since launching in November 2021. The spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid system on September 26. Impact is expected at 7:14 p.m. ET.
Where is it going?
The spacecraft is heading for a double-asteroid system, where a tiny “moon” asteroid, named Dimorphos, orbits a larger asteroid, Didymos.
Didymos. which means “twin” in Greek, is roughly 2,560 feet (780 meters)in diameter. Meanwhile, Dimorphos measures 525 feet (160 meters) across, and its name means “two forms.”
At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth — within 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers).
Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos isat risk of colliding with Earth — before or after the collision takes place.
What will DART do?
DART is going down in a blaze of glory. It will set its sights on Dimorphos, accelerate to 13,421 miles per hour (21,600 kilometers per hour) and crash into the moon nearly head-on.
The spacecraft is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, so it won’t obliterate the asteroid.
Instead, DART will try to change the asteroid’s speed and path in space. The mission team has compared this collision to a golf cart crashing into one of the Great Pyramids — enough energy to leave an impact crater.
The impact will change Dimorphos’ speed by 1% as it orbits Didymos. It doesn’t sound like much, but doing so will change the moon’s orbital period.
The nudge will shift Dimorphos slightly and make it more gravitationally bound to Didymos — so the collision won’t change the binary system’s path around the Earth or increase its chances of becoming a threat to our planet.
What will we get to see?
The spacecraft will share its view of the double-asteroid system through an instrument known as the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation, or DRACO.
This imager, which serves as DART’s eyes, will allow the spacecraft to identify the double-asteroid system and distinguish which space object it’s supposed to strike.
This instrument also is a high-resolution camera that aims to capture images of the two asteroids to be streamed back to Earth at a rate of one image per second in what will appear nearly like a video. You can watch the live stream on NASA’s website, beginning at 6 p.m. ET Monday.
Didymos and Dimorphos will appear as pinpricks of light about an hour before impact, gradually growing larger and more detailed in the frame.
Dimorphos has never been observed before, so scientists can finally take in its shape and the appearance of its surface.
We should be able to see Dimorphos in exquisite detail before DART crashes into it. Given the time it takes for images to stream back to Earth, they will be visible for eight seconds before a loss of signal occurs and DART’s mission ends — if it was successful.
The spacecraft alsohas its own photojournalist along for the ride.
A briefcase-size satellite from the Italian Space Agency hitched a ride with DART into space. Called the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, it detached from the spacecraft on September 11. The satellite is traveling behind DART to record what happens from a safe perspective.
Three minutes after impact, LICIACube will fly by Dimorphos to capture images and video of the impact plumeand maybe even spy on the impact crater. The CubeSat will turn to keep its cameras pointed at Dimorphos as it flies by.
The images and video, while not immediately available, will be streamed back to Earth in the days and weeks following the collision.
How will we know if the missionwas successful?
The LICIACube won’t be the only observer watching. The James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Lucy mission will observe the impact. The Didymos system may brighten as its dust and debris is ejected into space, said Statler, the NASA program scientist.
But ground-based telescopes will be key in determining if DART successfully changed the motion of Dimorphos.
The Didymos system was discovered in 1996, so astronomers have plenty of observations of the system. After the impact, observatories around the world will watch as Dimorphos crosses in front of and moves behind Didymos.
Dimorphos takes 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete an orbit of Didymos. If DART is successful, that time could decrease by 73 seconds, “but we actually think we’re going to change it by about 10 minutes,” said Edward Reynolds, DART project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Statler said he would be surprised if a measurement of the period change came in less than a few days but even more so if it took more than three weeks.
What if DART misses and doesn’t hit the asteroid?
“I’m highly confident that we were going to hit on Monday, and it will be a complete success,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA planetary defense officer.
But if DART misses its proverbial dart board, the team will be ready to ensure the spacecraft is safe and all its information downloaded to figure out why it didn’t hit Dimorphos.
The Applied Physics Laboratory’s Mission Operations Center will intervene if necessary, even though DART will have been operating autonomously for the final four hours of its journey.
It takes 38 seconds for a command to travel from Earth to the spacecraft, so the team can react quickly. The DART team has 21 contingency plans it has rehearsed, said Elena Adams, DART mission systems engineer at the Applied Physics Lab.
Why do we need to test this, and why on this asteroid?
Dimorphos was chosen for this mission because its size is comparable to asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. An asteroid the size of Dimorphos could cause “regional devastation” if it hit Earth.
The asteroid system is “the perfect natural laboratory” for the test, Statler said.
The mission will allow scientists to have a better understanding of the size and mass of each asteroid, which is crucial to understanding near-Earth objects.
Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with an orbit that places them within 30 million miles (48.3 million kilometers) from Earth. Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects that could cause grave harm is a primary focus of NASA and other space organizations around the world.
No asteroids are currently on a direct impact course with Earth, but more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids exist in all shapes and sizes.
The valuable data collected by DART will contribute to planetary defense strategies, especially the understanding of what kind of force can shift the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid that could collide with our planet.
Why don’t we just blow up the asteroid, like in ‘Armageddon’?
Moviesmake combating asteroid approaches seem like a hurried scramble to protect the planet, but“that’s not the way to do planetary defense,” Johnson said. Blowing up an asteroid could be more dangerous because then its pieces could be on a collision course with Earth.
But NASA is considering other methods of changing the motion of asteroids.
The DART spacecraft is considered to be a kinetic impactor that could change the speed and path of Dimorphos. If DART is successful, it could be one tool for deflecting asteroids.
Another option is a gravity tractor, which relies on mutual gravitational attraction between a spacecraft and an asteroid to tug the space rock out of its impacting trajectory into a more benign one, Johnson said.
Another technique is ion beam deflection, or shooting an ion engine at an asteroid for long periods of time until the ions change the asteroid’s velocity and orbit.
But both of these take time.
“Any technique that you can imagine that changes the orbital speed of the asteroid in orbit is a viable technique,” Johnson said.
An international forum called the Space Planning Commission has brought 18 national space agencies together to assess what might be best to deflect an asteroid, depending on its size and path.
Finding populations of hazardous asteroids and determining their sizes are priorities of NASA and its international partners, Johnson said. The design for a space-based telescope called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission is currently in review.
Will any other spacecraft fly by Dimorphos in the future?
The Didymos system won’t be lonely for too long. To survey the aftermath of the impact, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will launch in 2024. The spacecraft, along with two CubeSats, will arrive at the asteroid system two years later.
Hera will study both asteroids, measure physical properties of Dimorphos, and examine the DART impact crater and the moon’s orbit, with the aim of establishing an effective planetary defense strategy.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration released an image of the planet Tuesday that it said is the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in 30 years, and put the planet in a new light.
Dr.
Heidi Hammel,
a scientist working for the James Webb Space Telescope, which captured the rings, said she cried when she saw the image. “I was yelling, making my kids, my mom, even my cats look,” she wrote on Twitter.
Neptune and its rings, including Triton, top left, captured by the Webb telescope.
Photo:
Space Telescope Science Institut/Zuma Press
The Webb telescope, launched late last year, is 100 times as powerful as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which has orbited Earth for more than 30 years.
Webb’s new image shows a luminescent Neptune with bright, dusty rings around it. The deep-space telescope also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons, with the brightest-looking one being Triton. That moon is covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen reflecting much of the sunlight that hits it, NASA said.
NASA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Neptune, first discovered in 1846, is nearly four times wider than Earth and 30 times farther from the sun than our planet.
The Webb telescope, developed jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, orbits the sun about 1 million miles from Earth.
Unlike Hubble, which detects mostly visible light, Webb detects mostly infrared light. That allows it to capture images of older and more distant galaxies, giving astronomers a peek into how the universe took shape just after the big bang almost 14 billion years ago.
In July, NASA released Webb photos that it said were the deepest of the universe ever taken. President
Biden
unveiled the pictures at the White House at the time: “Today is a historic day,” Mr.
Biden
said, adding that the telescope’s first images “show what we can achieve, and what more we can discover.”
Webb’s infrared cameras didn’t show Neptune in its blue hue, like Hubble did. Instead, Webb’s images picked up bright spots on the planet that NASA said are methane-ice clouds.
Related Video: NASA’s DART spacecraft will intentionally collide with an asteroid on Monday, in an attempt to alter the space rock’s trajectory. The mission aims to test technology that could defend Earth against potential asteroid threats. Photo illustration: NASA and Laura Kammermann
Chris Jericho agrees to start with the code of honor, but then the two men waste no time as Claudio Castagnoli just batters him with a series of uppercuts before lifting him up and dropping him on the top rope, and booting him to the floor. The champion continues the attack on the floor, sending Jericho into the ring apron, but Jericho then puts Cary Silkin in the way to take advantage, throwing Silkin to the floor afterward.
Despite that, Claudio regains control when they get into the ring, and they then begin trading chops. The two brawl to the apron and they go back and forth with forearms as Jericho then rakes the eye, and suplexes the champion to the floor. Jericho then sidesteps a running uppercut attempt, and he follows up with a boot to the head and a catapult underneath the bottom rope.
Castagnoli is able to connect with some uppercuts though, and he then drops Jericho with a dropkick in the corner, but as he goes to the top turnbuckle Jericho swipes his legs. The JAS leader heads up and aims for a hurricanrana but Castagnoli catches it, only for Jericho to reverse back into the move during an avalanche attempt! Jericho tries a Codebreaker, but he gets caught and thrown into the air for an uppercut, leading to a near fall.
Castagnoli then brings in the hammer and anvil elbow strikes, and he then stomps down on him before locking in the Sharpshooter. Jericho gets out and aims for a low blow but that is blocked and turned into a Ricola Bomb, which forces Jericho to kick out yet again. Castagnoli then looks to springboard off the second rope, but he does so directly into a Codebreaker, and this time it’s the champion having to kick out.
The Walls Of Jericho then gets locked in, but Castagnoli rolls through and then stomps away on his opponent before busting out the Giant Swing! He catapults Jericho into the turnbuckle, following up with a lariat, but it still isn’t enough. Jericho then grabs his bat, but Castagnoli catches it, yet he is then sent toward the referee which leads to him checking himself. Jericho then hits a low blow and the Judas Effect to add to his legacy!
Winner (and new ROH World Champion): Chris Jericho
Post-match the rest of JAS come out to celebrate, including Daniel Garcia, who appears visibly less impressed than his stablemates.
“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” said Heidi Hammel, a Neptune expert and interdisciplinary scientist on the Webb project, in a news release.
In addition to several crisp, narrow rings, the Webb images show Neptune’s fainter dust bands. Some of the rings haven’t been observed since NASA’s Voyager 2 got the first photographic proof of the existence of Neptune’s rings during its flyby in 1989.
Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, Neptune is the most distant planet in our solar system. The planet and its neighbor Uranus are known as “ice giants” because their interiors are made up of heavier elements than the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, which are richer in hydrogen and helium.
In the new images, Neptune looks white, as opposed to the typical blueappearance it has in views captured at visible wavelengths of light. This is because gaseous methane, part of the planet’s chemical makeup, doesn’t appear blue to Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
Also visible in the images are methane-ice clouds — bright streaks and spots that reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane gas. It’s also possible to spot a bright, thin line circling the planet’s equator, which could be “a visual signature of global atmospheric circulation that powers Neptune’s winds and storms,” according to the release.
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons, including its largest moon, Triton, which moves around the planet at an unusual backward orbit. Astronomers think Triton was perhaps an object in the Kuiper Belt — a region of icy objects at the edge of the solar system — that fell into Neptune’s gravitational grasp. Scientists plan to use Webb to further study Triton and Neptune in the coming years.
Located 30 times farther from the sun than Earth, Neptune moves through its solar orbit in the remote, dark region of the outer solar system. At that distance, the sun is so small and faint that noon on Neptune is similar to a dim twilight on Earth, the news release said.
Webb is a more than10-year mission run by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
Compared with other telescopes, the space observatory’s massive mirror can see fainter galaxies that are farther away and has the potential to enhance scientists’ understanding of the origins of the universe. However, it’s also using its stable and precise image quality to illuminate our own solar system, with images of Mars, Jupiter and now Neptune.
President Joe Biden returns to the green-marbled United Nations stage Wednesday hours after Russia’s president announced in a provocative speech an escalation in his war effort in Ukraine, setting up a rhetorical showdown between the two leaders on the international stage.
Biden had already planned to make the Ukraine war a centerpiece of his yearly UN address, with aides previewing a harsh message for Moscow. But President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that he is ordering a “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens in the Ukraine war and again raising the specter of using nuclear weapons dramatically increases the stakes for Biden’s address.
In his 20-minute speech, Putin warned he would use “all the means at our disposal” if he deemed the “territorial integrity” of Russia to be jeopardized.
The mobilization means citizens who are in the reserve could be called up, and those with military experience would be subject to conscription, Putin said, adding that the necessary decree had already been signed and took effect on Wednesday.
The escalation came after stunning Russian setbacks in the war, which has dragged on for more than six months. Biden, who has led efforts to isolate Russia and supply Ukraine with advanced weaponry, had been planning to underscore those efforts in Wednesday’s speech. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also planned to address the UN on Wednesday.
He expects to offer a “firm rebuke of Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine,” according to his national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and deliver “a call to the world to continue to stand against the naked aggression that we’ve seen these past several months.”
Still, Putin’s pugilistic speech hours ahead of Biden’s address dramatically illustrated the challenges that lie ahead. The combined effects of the prolonged conflict and economic uncertainty have created a dark mood among world leaders gathering in New York this week for the annual high-level UN meetings.
After making his debut UN address last year under the cloud of a messy Afghanistan withdrawal and stalled domestic ambitions, Biden’s aides believe he enters his sophomore outing with a stronger hand.
“We believe that the President heads to New York with the wind at his back,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House on Tuesday, citing a mostly-united western alliance and recent wins on the domestic front, including a historic investment in fighting climate change.
Still, even as Biden proclaims renewed US leadership, deeper questions persist over his ability to maintain that position in the years ahead, as fears of a global recession looms and threats to American democracy fester.
Biden has spent ample time underscoring those threats in recent weeks, primarily for a domestic audience but with foreign capitals also listening intently. He has recounted in recent speeches sitting around a table at last year’s Group of 7 summit in Cornwall, England, telling fellow leaders that “America is back.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, Biden has told audiences, asked him: “For how long?”
That question still hangs over Biden’s efforts on the world stage, even a year-and-a-half into his term, as his predecessor continues to wield influence over the Republican Party and prepares to mount another run for the White House. Biden himself said in an interview that aired Sunday that while he intends to run for reelection, a final decision “remains to be seen.”
One of the issues currently at the forefront of global affairs – the pained negotiations to restart the Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew – only underscores the effects of pendulum swings in American leadership.
For Biden, the yearly UN speech is another stab at explaining to the world how he has steered the United States back into a position of leadership after the “America First” years of Donald Trump.
In his speech, Biden will announce $2.9 billion in US assistance to help address global food insecurity. The $2.9 billion investment, the White House said in a fact sheet, is aimed at shoring up food supply amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, widespread inflation and other supply chain issues, and builds on $6.9 billion already committed by the US this year.
It includes $2 billion in global humanitarian assistance through USAID, the US Agency for International Development.
Later Wednesday morning, Biden will host a pledging session for the Global Fund to Fight HIV, AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In the evening, Biden and the first lady will host a leaders’ reception at the American Museum of Natural History.
This week’s schedule was thrown into flux as world leaders assembled in London for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, one of the largest gatherings of heads-of-state in recent memory. Many flew from the British capital to New York for the UN meetings.
Instead of his usual Tuesday morning speaking slot, Biden’s address was pushed back a day. Unlike the past several years, when the UN General Assembly was scaled down due to Covid-19, this year’s gathering is back to its usual in-person capacity.
Biden and his aides have been drafting the address for several weeks, a period that coincided with Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive taking back some Russian-held territory after months of occupation. The initiative had been coordinated with American officials, including through enhanced information and intelligence sharing, and sustained by weaponry provided by the US and its allies.
US officials have cautioned Ukraine’s current gains don’t necessarily signal a wider change in the outlook of the war, which remains likely to be a prolonged conflict. A day ahead of Biden’s speech, two Russian-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine announced plans for referendums on officially joining Russia, votes the US has previously warned would be “shams.”
One of Biden’s objectives in his speech Wednesday will be to stress the importance of maintaining unity among western allies in supporting Ukraine in the uncertain months ahead.
That effort is made more difficult by a looming energy crisis as Russia withholds supplies of natural gas to Europe as winter sets in. Higher costs spurred in part by withering western sanctions on Moscow have led to an economic calamity that is causing political turmoil for many leaders in Biden’s coalition, including himself.
The President meets with one of those leaders, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, later Wednesday. It will be their first formal in-person talks since Truss entered office earlier this month following the decision of her predecessor, Boris Johnson, to step down.
She inherited a deep economic crisis, fueled by high inflation and soaring energy costs, that has led to fears the UK could soon enter a prolonged recession. While few in the Biden administration shed tears at Johnson’s resignation – Biden once described him as the “physical and emotional clone” of Trump – the US and the UK were deeply aligned in their approach to Russia under his leadership.
White House officials expect that cooperation will continue under Truss, even as she comes under pressure to ease economic pressures at home.
Less certain, however, is whether Truss’s hardline approach to Brexit will sour relations with Biden. The President has taken a personal interest in the particular issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a post-Brexit arrangement that requires extra checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The rules were designed to keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland open and avoid a return to sectarian violence. But Truss has moved to rewrite those rules, causing deep anxiety in both Brussels and Washington.
Putin is not expected in-person at this year’s general assembly, though his foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will be in New York for the event. Chinese President Xi Jinping is also not planning to attend the UN in person this year.
The two autocratic leaders, who met in-person last week, have deepened ties between their countries as relations with the west deteriorate. Biden has warned Xi against supporting Putin in his invasion of Ukraine, a theme he’s expected to reiterate in Wednesday’s speech.
Putin and Xi’s absence underscores the limits of venues like the UN to resolve the world’s most serious problems. With permanent seats on the UN Security Council, Russia has resisted approving resolutions on Syria and Ukraine, leading to inaction.
Efforts to reform the Security Council have gained more steam under the Biden administration, though prospects of breaking the body’s stalemate seem slim. Biden’s aides are still weighing how specifically he will speak to the US desire to reform the Security Council during his visit to the UN this week, but he is expected to make his views known at least in private with other leaders.
“We’re committed to finding a way forward to make the UN fit for purpose for this century. And, currently, there is an attack on the UN system. There’s an attack on the charter. And that’s by a permanent member of the Security Council,” Biden’s ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I can’t change the fact that Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, but I can continue the efforts that we have succeeded at, and that’s isolating them, condemning them, and making sure that they know and understand it’s not business as usual,” she told Jake Tapper.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The world’s problems seized the spotlight Tuesday as the U.N. General Assembly’s yearly meeting of world leaders opened with dire assessments of a planet beset by escalating crises and conflicts that an aging international order seems increasingly ill-equipped to tackle.
After two years when many leaders weighed in by video because of the coronavirus pandemic, now presidents, premiers, monarchs and foreign ministers have gathered almost entirely in person for diplomacy’s premier global event.
But the tone is far from celebratory. Instead, it’s the blare of a tense and worried world.
“We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, adding that “our world is in peril — and paralyzed.”
He and others pointed to conflicts ranging from Russia’s six-month-old war in Ukraine to the decades-long dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. Speakers worried about a changing climate, spiking fuel prices, food shortages, economic inequality, migration, disinformation, discrimination, hate speech, public health and more.
Priorities varied, as did prescriptions for curing the humanity’s ills. But in a forum dedicated to the idea of bringing the world together, many leaders sounded a common theme: The globe needs cooperation, dialogue and trust, now more than ever.
“We live in an era of uncertainty and shocks,” Chilean President Gabriel Boric said. “It is clear nowadays that no country, large or small, humble or powerful, can save itself on its own.”
Or, as Guterres put it, “Let’s work as one, as a coalition of the world, as united nations.”
It’s rarely that easy. As Guterres himself noted, geopolitical divisions are undermining the work of the U.N. Security Council, international law, people’s trust in democratic institutions, and most forms of international cooperation.
“The divergence between developed and developing countries, between North and South, between the privileged and the rest, is becoming more dangerous by the day,” the secretary-general said. “It is at the root of the geopolitical tensions and lack of trust that poison every area of global cooperation, from vaccines to sanctions to trade.”
While appeals to preserve large-scale international cooperation — or multilateralism, in diplomatic parlance — abound, so do different ideas about the balance between working together and standing up for oneself, and about whether an “international order” set up after World War II needs reordering.
“We want a multilateralism that is open and respectful of our differences,” Senegalese President Macky Sall said. He added that the U.N. can win all countries’ support only “on the basis of shared ideals, and not local values erected as universal norms.”
After the pandemic forced an entirely virtual meeting in 2020 and a hybrid one last year, delegates reflecting the world’s countries and cultures are once again filling the halls of the United Nations headquarters this week. Before the meeting began, leaders and ministers wearing masks wandered the assembly hall, chatting individually and in groups.
It was a sign that that despite the fragmented state of the international community, the United Nations remains the key gathering place for global leaders. Nearly 150 heads of state and government have signed on to speak during the nearly weeklong “General Debate,” a high number that illustrates the gathering’s distinction as a place to deliver their views and meet privately to discuss various challenges — and, they hope, make some progress.
Guterres made sure to start out by sounding a note of hope. He showed a photo of the first U.N.-chartered ship carrying grain from Ukraine — part of a deal between Ukraine and Russia that the U.N. and Turkey helped broker — to the Horn of Africa, where millions of people are on the edge of famine It is, he said, an example of promise “in a world teeming with turmoil.”
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine topped the agenda for many speakers.
The conflict has become the largest war in Europe since World War II and has opened fissures among major powers in a way not seen since the Cold War. It also has raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe at a large power plant in Ukraine’s now Russia-occupied southeast.
Meanwhile, the loss of important grain and fertilizer exports from Ukraine and Russia has triggered a food crisis, especially in developing countries, and inflation and a rising cost of living in many nations.
As Jordan’s King Abdullah II noted, well-off countries that are having unfamiliar experiences of scarcity “are discovering a truth that people in developing countries have known for a long time: For countries to thrive, affordable food must get to every family’s table.”
Leaders in many countries are trying to prevent a wider war and restore peace in Europe. Diplomats, though, aren’t expecting any breakthroughs this week.
In an impassioned speech to the assembly, French President Emmanuel Macron said no country can stand on the sidelines in the face of Russia’s aggression. He accused those who remain silent of being “in a way complicit with a new cause of imperialism” that is trampling on the current world order and is making peace impossible.
Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova’s country has long depended on Russia for oil and gas. But Slovakia has provided military aid to neighbor Ukraine, she noted.
“We, the members of the U.N., need to clearly side with victim over aggressor,” she said.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, protection of civilians and “the maintenance of all channels of dialogue between the parties.” But he opposed what he called “one-sided or unilateral” Western sanctions, saying they have harmed economic recovery and have threatened human rights of vulnerable populations.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia has yet had its turn to speak. The assembly has agreed to allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to speak by video, over objections from Russia and a few of its allies.
Zelenskyy’s speech is expected Wednesday, as is an in-person address from U.S. President Joe Biden. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is due to take the rostrum Saturday.
___
Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, contributed to this report. For more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly
Juvenile Lystrosaurus murrayi skeleton with enveloping layer interpreted as mummified skin. Photo: Courtesy Roger Smith
It was a time of catastrophic change. Most of life on Earth had been wiped out, global temperatures had increased dramatically, and the weather raged in extremes. That anything survived in this hostile environment is remarkable, and yet, some plants and animals persisted. One such survivor was Lystrosaurus, a four-legged herbivore with a beaked snout and two pointy tusk-like teeth. And now, over 250 million years later, paleontologists have uncovered two fossils of these little animals complete with mummified skin.
This exciting discovery is described in a paper published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. The two Lystrosaurus fossils are among 170 fossils from the Karoo Basin in South Africa studied in this paper. The Karoo is one of a handful of places in the world that records the boundary separating the Permian and the Triassic periods, a boundary that includes the End-Permian Extinction Event (EPME) that killed most marine and terrestrial life approximately 252 million years ago.
Lead author Roger Smith has been working there for 47 years. He’s a distinguished professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand and an Emeritus Research Associate at Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town. He and his colleagues Jennifer Botha and Pia Viglietti studied an outcrop that is a known Lystrosaurus hot spot, having produced more than 500 fossils. But for this paper, they focused on 170 tetrapod fossils–a term referring to four-legged vertebrates–all of them from a time known as the Induan Age, which covers the million years after the EPME. Among the many fossils studied in this outcrop, clusters of four to eight Lystrosaurus fossils were found close together, their bodies spread-eagled, two of them preserving mummified skin.
That skin, Smith explained in a video call, almost matched what he had predicted: the animal didn’t have hair, as evidenced by the lack of hair follicles, but it wasn’t scaly, either. Noting the scales often don’t preserve, he compared it to elephant skin: leathery but with dimples. “The idea that it was like a transitional fossil—between scaly and true hairy—it’s almost borne out by the texture of that skin,” he said.
Close-up of the pustular surface texture of interpreted mummified skin. Photo: Courtesy Roger Smith
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Juan Carlos Cisneros is a paleontologist at the Federal University of Piauí in Brazil. Although not involved in this research, he, too, has worked in the Karoo Basin and has previously collaborated with Smith. “This is the closest to taking a photograph of them at that time,” he said, comparing the mummified fossils to “a time capsule.”
“We’re usually happy with nice teeth, nice bones, and once in a while we find a complete skeleton. But nobody else finds mummified skin. Not at that age, for sure! We’re talking about things that are older than dinosaurs,” he enthused. “Nobody finds that kind of beautiful preservation, so detailed, at that time.”
What provides exquisite insight into animals over 250 million years old is also an indication that they met a horrible end. Examination of the bone microstructure of two of the fossils suggests they were young. The authors believe that the position and age at which these animals died are clues that they collapsed near a dried-up water source. They point to examples of today’s young elephants in similar drought circumstances, which die from starvation in a spread-eagled “sudden death posture” and whose skin, notably, dries out quickly and also mummifies.
Georgina Farrell excavating the mummified Lystrosaurus fossilPhoto: Courtesy Roger Smith
These clusters of fossils, along with the others studied in this outcrop, indicate that herds of young Lystrosaurus died as a direct result of drought. Substantial evidence for drought is found in the sedimentary layers in the Karoo Basin, in geochemical isotopic analysis, and within these and otherfossils described in a number of papers. Which is why it is surprising that Smith maintains that “Even though the world had been devastated, the resulting ecosystem was still fully functioning.”
In other words, the planet may have been completely transformed—and into a hostile one at that—but life, paraphrasing the words of a major motion picture, still found a way.
Evidence suggests that terrestrial animals in the Karoo at this time grew fast, matured earlier, lived short lives, and were generally smaller. Species of Lystrosaurus during the Permian, for example, were bigger than those found in the Triassic, but it is also important to note that all of the Lystrosaurus fossils yet discovered from the Triassic are of juveniles and subadults.
Cisneros compared the size of Lystrosaurus after the EPME to that of a small pig and said it “was the biggest land animal of that time. Everything that survived the mass extinction was small.”
“Before the extinction,” Smith concurred, “being big and heavy and a ruminant was the vogue. But afterwards, it was no longer successful.”
Burrowing underground is one of the behaviors believed to have helped Lystrosaurus survive the extinction and the extreme heat following that event. But that’s not all, and some of the other survival strategies involve, if not interspecies cooperation, then at least interspecies tolerance. In one example, the authors point to the fossils of two different Lystrosaurus species that died together, indicating that these species may have foraged for food together, rather than competing for it.
Sharing shelter with other contemporaneous species was another example. In three instances, multiple species including Lystrosaurus were found together in association with long tubular burrow casts, strongly indicating these animals sheltered—and died—together.
Within these ancient shared shelters, three of the species were four-legged reptiles (Thrinaxodon, Galesaurus and Lystrosaurus); one of them (Prolacerta) was a four-legged archosauromorph—a lineage that would eventually give rise to crocodiles and dinosaurs.
Smith said he and his colleagues are finding more evidence “now that these dinosaur ancestors were not only able to live there, but they were able to diversify and become the dominant animals into the Triassic. “This,” he concluded, “is the beginning of the rise of the dinosaur.”
While the causes of the EPME continue to be debated, the authors draw upon their work in the Karoo Basin to support the hyperthermal cause of extinction, meaning that Earth was catastrophically impacted by a volcanic eruption in the Siberian Traps around 252 million years ago, an event that changed the weather through the volcanic emission of greenhouse gasses and acidic particles. This had devastating consequences, including “vegetation die-off and drought (aridity with shorter and unpredictable periods of rain) on land,” Smith explained, as well as the “de-oxygenation and acidification of the oceans.”
“We are now treating this as a Pangea-wide hyperthermal,” Smith added, referring to the single continent that comprised land on Earth at that time. “Therefore, Pangea-wide drought episodes would be expected.”
This paper, he noted, is part of a larger project he and his colleagues have been working on within the Karoo Basin: only one of the many papers preceding it and other exciting papers yet to come.
“There is still much to be resolved,” Smith admitted, adding that he believes that when he and his colleagues have completed their research on the Karoo Permo-Triassic Boundary (PTB) Interval, he thinks they will be “recognised as the type locality for the terrestrial End Permian extinction event.”
“The Karoo has the best, the most complete fossil record of these tetrapods from the Permian Triassic,” Cisneros agreed. “If there’s anywhere in the world where you would expect to find it, it’s in the Karoo.”
Jeanne Timmons (@mostlymammoths) is a freelance writer based in New Hampshire who blogs about paleontology and archaeology at mostlymammoths.wordpress.com.
