Space futures and fox friends
In a week that included watching the unwittingly depressing parody of our national “conversation” about climate change/the pandemic called Don’t Look Up, I keep thinking that perhaps the real news about looking up got crowded out.
The story of NASA’s James Webb Telescope, hurled into space on Christmas Day, is best described at Quanta magazine. I love a timely, elegant piece of writing like this one with so much backstory.
And for a snapshot of the “reverse space origami” that needs to continue over the next week or so for the telescope to begin to be successful The Verge has a great article.
Though I have previously weighed in on veggies in space, there’s the not-to-be-missed article about simulating space farming here on Earth from Tuesday’s NYT.
All that talk of molecules forming in simulated environments reminded me of what I consider to be the most exciting scientific breakthrough of the year: artificial intelligence that can solve protein-folding puzzles with great accuracy. The intention behind DeepMind’s AlphaFold, “AI that actually helps us understand the world,” is admirable. The fact that function is known to follow form in the myriad of molecules that make up life means that AI is now about to speed up our ability to understand disease on a molecular level. Though I don’t embrace reductionism as scientific “gospel,” molecular scientific understanding has and will continue to bring us big rewards. More on this advance at The Guardian’s list of the top science stories of the year (item #5).
But what of nature, of beauty, or of the poetic this week, you may be wondering?
In this liminal week, I’m reading a beautiful book by Catherine Raven, called Fox and I. You should read it, too, but start with her Author Notes at National Geographic as a point of entry. This story will change you, in good ways.
Foggy walks in the unseasonably warm weather we’re having parse my reading hours. Ticks are a threat in these temps. Winter is supposed to be the off-season for ticks—until it’s not!
A quirky folio called A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, published as a project of the Institute of Critical Zoologists, was one of my Christmas gifts.
Perusing its 55 plates this week, I’m reveling in the encyclopedic form they’re presented in, and letting the often funny, often bittersweet resonances of the subjects presented seep in.
Plate 32. Chemical aura of non-GMO corn, which brings wasps that attack corn pests. From A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, 2013. ICZ.
Lastly, I couldn’t resist this story about sea otters’ “leaky” mitochondria. It’s apparently how they stay warm in Arctic temps as the smallest of cold water mammals; and the discovery is already being touted as a potential new insight to obesity. But come on, can’t we linger on how cute they are for a minute?
Photo, Joe Robertson.
