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Cosmos Magazine, Issue 97 (December 2022)
Cosmos Magazine, Issue 97 (December 2022)
E N E R G Y. E F F O R T.
ENDEAVOUR
W E LC O M E TO T H E N E X T S PAC E AG E
WE DREAM OF MARS
Today’s gamers,
tomorrow’s voyagers
ASTRO-GASTRONOMY
Veggies race into space
THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF AUSTRALIA
97
AU $15.00 NZ $16.00
522008
9 771832
TOP END MEGAFAUNA • SOLAR POWER TOWERS: HERO OR HOAX? • 007: REEL TO REAL
Explorers then – and again
There’s great symmetry in the current Artemis mission, humankind’s
return to crewed deep space exploration, and the 50th anniversary of
Apollo 17 – the most recent human Moon-landing mission. That journey
saw Harvard PhD Harrison Schmitt, bottom left, become the only
professional geologist to walk on the Moon. Mission commander Gene
Cernan took this photograph, near the lunar module’s Taurus-Littrow
landing site, on 13 December 1973; the astronauts safely returned to
Earth on 19 December. For space exploration in this issue, turn to page
40 to learn about planning for the Mars samples retrieval mission; to
page 74, for a look at the critical business of growing food in space; and
to page 86, to consider how mere video games might be the spark that
ignites the next generation of human deep-space explorers.
EUGENE A CERNAN / NASA
CONTENTS COSMOS 97 DECEMBER 2022 – FEBRUARY 2023
40
FEATURES
28 TOWER OF POWER
A solar tech that’s struggled to gain a foothold is once again
in the renewables conversation. RACHEL WILLIAMSON looks
at the past, and possible future, of concentrated solar power.
34 NATURE’S FIREWORKS
Few creatures prompt such wonder as bioluminescent marine life.
LISA-ANN GERSHWIN introduces a school of glowing life, and explains
the chemical mechanisms that drive their illuminating trick.
40 MARS ROCKS
There are few geological specimens more precious than Moon rocks
brought back to Earth. But as RICHARD A LOVETT explains, that’s
about to change, with NASA and ESA planning the retrieval of
Martian soil and rock samples collected by Perseverance.
56 STAR STRUCK
The Royal Museums Greenwich 14th Astronomy Photographer
of the Year competition was held in 2022. The finalist images are
as ever a beautiful reminder of our small place in a huge universe.
74 GARDENING IN SPACE
A humble pond weed might be the key to future space explorers getting
their greens, according to JAMIE SEIDEL.
80 WIZARDS OF OZ
BRETT MASON tells the thrilling story of developments by scientists
Mark Oliphant and Howard Florey that made a global mark.
4 COSMOS MAGAZINE
86
28
REGULARS
8 DIGEST
Dispatches from the world of science
2022 Nobel Prizes 10
‘DishBrain’ plays Pong 14
Future supercontinent 18
Guess the object 21
ZEITGEIST
96 CHOOK EGG: CHEMICAL MARVEL
All yolks aside, NATHAN KILAH reveals the things
that make eggs cool, yummy and nutritious.
112 MINDGAMES 28
Fiendishly fun puzzles.
114 PORTRAIT
Top End marine biologist NATALIE ROBSON .
106
GARY KAVANAGH / GETTY IMAGES
cosmosmagazine.com 5
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6 COSMOS MAGAZINE
ISSUE 97
CONTRIBUTORS
Tania Ewing, Lisa-ann Gershwin,
David Hancock, Nathan Kilah,
Richard A Lovett, Brett Mason,
Jamie Seidel, Rachel Williamson.
Mind Games Tess Brady / Snodger Puzzles
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cosmosmagazine.com 7
DIGEST
Science news from around the globe (and even further)
SPACE
Mission success!
DART changes the
direction of asteroid
Dimorphos
Take that, Armageddon: humans can
swat asteroids out of orbit after all.
T he DART mission to change completion of the project started in Arizona and the Giant Magellan
the path of an asteroid has back in 2017. Telescope in Chile.
successfully achieved its The US$330 million The calculations found a
objective and moved a stadium- spacecraft’s impact was only 32-minute change in Dimorphos’
sized space rock further than expected to shift the position of orbit time – 25 times greater
NASA originally expected. Dimorphos by one millimetre, than the mission’s 73-second
In September, the Double but in the scheme of its 11-hour, benchmark.
Asteroid Redirection Test 55-minute orbit around the nearby “This result is one important
(DART) spacecraft deliberately asteroid Didymos, even this step toward understanding the
smashed into the surface of the miniscule shift could shave over a full effect of DART’s impact with
asteroid Dimorphos at more than minute from its space loop. its target asteroid,” says NASA
23,000 km/h after an 11-million- Prior to the impact, the Planetary Science Division
JOSEPH DEPASQUALE, ALYSSA PAGAN. ASI/NASA/APL
cosmosmagazine.com 9
Nobel Prizes 2022
HEINZ-PETER BADER/STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES NEWS. JUSTIN SULLIVAN/STAFF/GETTY IMAGES NEWS. SAM TARLING/STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES NEWS.
PHYSICS
10 COSMOS MAGAZINE
DIGEST
CHEMISTRY
MEDICINE
research in the area,” wrote That’s much harder, and The copper click revolutionised a
Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam and the solution has won Carolyn lot of chemical synthesis.
Anna Wedell, professors at the Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Bertozzi then figured out a
Karolinska Institute. Barry Sharpless the 2022 Nobel way to do this reaction without
Prize for Chemistry “for the copper: meaning it could be used
development of click chemistry in biological applications.
and bioorthogonal chemistry”. This led to “bioorthoganal”
Sharpless has been lauded chemistry, or reactions that
for refining a list of chemical happen on a cell’s surface without
reactions that met these disrupting its behaviour. It’s been
requirements. critical to the development of
Named “click chemistry”, this several cancer pharmaceuticals
list has become a first point of call now in clinical trials.
cosmosmagazine.com 11
evolution, we can have a better
understanding of who we are.”
Previous University of
Adelaide research has uncovered
a range of evolutionary trends,
from historic climate change
causing the demise of ancestral
lions and bears, to the first
interactions between humans and
coronaviruses 20,000 years ago.
And the broader field of
research into ancient DNA has
shed light on important moments
in human history. Only recently
did analyses of ancient genes
ANTHROPOLOGY uncover locations on the human
genome associated with surviving
T he genes of ancient humans preserving our ancestors. Souilmi. “It only cares about
might have changed Until now, the sudden increase It’s all in whether you’re procreating
substantially due to in frequency of these genes in the genes. successfully… when it acts, it’s
environmental pressures and human groups was masked by the Researchers either killing a lot of people,
believe it’s
change, say an international team exchange of DNA between people [preventing] some people from
more likely that
of researchers. during reproduction. environmental reproducing successfully, or some
A widely held belief related Now, analyses of more than pressures people are just not finding mates
to human evolution is that 1000 ancient genomes dating as influenced because they have some sort of
our ancient ancestors’ ability far back as 45,000 years ago have genetics than ailment that’s not allowing them
to fashion tools, shelter, and found historic signals showing that human to mate successfully, or might
use advanced communication that genetic adaptation was more ingenuity make them undesirable.
shielded our
skills may have helped to shield common than previously thought. “What we’re finding is that
ancestors
them from large environmental “Evolutionary events [are] from those the signal of natural selection we
impacts such as changing climate, exactly what shape our genetic pressures. detected in this [research] was
disease and exposure to other diversity today,” says co-lead likely a single event, because the
events affecting mortality. author Dr Yassine Souilmi. signal is clustered in time in a
But research led out of the “That’s what makes us very early migration out of Africa.
MIKE BAXTER
University of Adelaide suggests vulnerable to certain diseases “Not all of the [events] we
that beneficial genes may have [and] resistant to others. detected occurred at the same
played a more important role in Having a good understanding of time, but the bulk of them did.”
12 COSMOS MAGAZINE
DIGEST
BIOLOGY
CLIMATE
cosmosmagazine.com 13
DIGEST
BIOLOGY
self-organisation; simply because
– unlike a pet – these mini-brains
have no sense of reward and
punishment,” he says.
To be clear, this isn’t a brain.
The human brain has somewhere
in the region of 86 billion
neurons. A mouse has 70 million.
DishBrain has a similar number of
neurons to a bumblebee.
But even if DishBrain did have
86 billion neurons, we just don’t
know enough about the human
brain to be able to create anything
resembling a human brain.
Let’s again consider –
DishBrain just learnt how to
play Pong, so it’s probably worth
understanding how it works.
The team placed either hiPSC
human neurons or E15 mouse
embryo neurons onto a high-
density multi-electrode array –
think of this like a silicon chip in a
medium-filled petri dish.
The neurons were set up to play
Pong by inducing zaps of different
voltages depending on where the
to play Pong, what does DishBrain which side the ball was
on, while distance from the paddle
was indicated by the frequency of
team’s system – called DishBrain University College London. the bumblebee,” says lead author
– does seemingly learn how to “Remarkably, the cultures Brett Kagan, chief scientific
play a version of the game Pong, learnt how to make their world officer at Cortical Labs.
which gives us a perfect chance to more predictable by acting upon “I think that’s the right sort
understand what a “brain-on-a- it. This is remarkable because of approach in considering its
chip” even is. you cannot teach this kind of performance here.”
14 COSMOS MAGAZINE
Wh e re w ill
thei r fu tu re s
tak e t he m ?
Sign up online
education.riaus.org.au/
DISCOVERY
02
Conservationists to track released critically
FOCUS: AVIAN RESEARCH endangered plains-wanderers (shown here)
using tiny, solar-powered, satellite backpacks.
01
Woodpecker drumming uses the same 03
regions of the brain as vocal learning
and production in songbirds. Dr Dominique Potvin,
behavioural ecologist and
senior lecturer in animal
ecology, explains current
ideas about the reasons
for the dawn chorus.
04
06
German research finds birds might
have a more efficient way of processing
glucose, meaning that bird neurons need
about a third less than neurons in a
mammalian brain.
07
CSIRO study finds birds at Australian study sites
died at a rate three times greater during a very
hot summer compared to a mild summer.
ALEX PIKE / PEDIONOMUS TORQUATUS
16 COSMOS MAGAZINE
DIGEST
CLIMATE
NATURE
cosmosmagazine.com 17
DIGEST
GEOLOGY
EARTH
Supercomputer EXTINCT
ANIMAL WAS
model predicts JUST HIDING
UNDER A ROCK
supercontinent to Scientists find long-lost
insect after an 80-year
form in Pacific absence.
T he world’s next
supercontinent will form
when the Pacific Ocean
closes in 200–300 million years,
Indian are more resistant to
continental drift than the more
worn-down Pacific.
“Over the past two billion
LEFT: CURTIN UNIVERSITY. ©ESA/DLR/FU BERLIN, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, HTTPS://WWW.ESA.INT/ESA_MULTIMEDIA/TERMS_AND_CONDITIONS. ABOVE: JUSTIN GILLIGAN DPE.
according to new research in years, Earth’s continents have
National Science Review. collided to form a supercontinent When Maxim Adams turned
Earth’s continents move every 600 million years,” says over a rock on Lord Howe
very slowly over the mantle. The Dr Chuan Huang, from Curtin Island’s northern coastline, he
Australasian plate is one of the University’s Earth Dynamics wasn’t expecting to find a long-
faster moving ones, creeping Research Group. “This means missing animal.
northward at around seven that the current continents are “I lifted the first rock under
centimetres per year. due to come together again in this huge banyan tree, and there
Using a supercomputer, a couple of hundred of million it was. For the first 10 seconds
geologists were able to simulate years’ time.” or so, I thought ‘No, it can’t be’,”
the formation of supercontinents. The future landmass has Adams says.
Their results show that the been dubbed Amasia. “Australia ‘It’ is Panesthia lata – the
cooling of Earth over billions of is also expected to play a role Lord Howe Island wood-eating
years causes the thickness and in this important Earth event, cockroach – a species thought
strength of the plates under the first colliding with Asia and then to have been wiped out by the
oceans to reduce. So, “younger” connecting America and Asia,” arrival of rats on the island in
oceans like the Atlantic and says Huang. the 1910s.
Adams and his supervising
professor Nathan Lo spent a
week searching for more colonies
of the previously vanished
arthropods, but to no avail.
Although Lo has written
of the perseverance of
cockroaches on neighbouring
islands, P. Iata is genetically
distinct. “These cockroaches are
almost like our very own version
of Darwin’s finches, separated
on little islands over thousands
or millions of years developing
their own unique genetics,” says
chair of the Lord Howe Island
board, Atticus Fleming.
18 COSMOS MAGAZINE
Researcher
Hoshimoto’s
illustration of the The hydrogen made by
new reaction. The this method is only about 70%
lion – boranes and pure: it also contains carbon
2-methylquinoline monoxide, carbon dioxide, and
– finds and holds trace amounts of other gases,
the hydrogen
each of which have to be removed
molecules.
individually through laborious,
energy-intensive ways.
“Even a small amount of
carbon monoxide can hinder
hydrogen uptake,” says
corresponding author Associate
Professor Yoichi Hoshimoto, from
Osaka University’s Department
of Applied Chemistry.
“Thus, costly purification
methods to isolate the hydrogen
prior to storage are necessary.”
CHEMISTRY The Osaka research has found
that boron-based compounds
20 COSMOS MAGAZINE
DIGEST
NATURE
ALL ABUZZ:
HOW BEES
AND OTHER
SWARMING
INSECTS
MAKE POWER
Insect swarms can
produce as much
electric charge in
the atmosphere as a
thunderstorm cloud.
cosmosmagazine.com 21
DIGEST
MEDICINE
DISCOVERY
Luckily “flatworm goop” is non-structured bioadhesives. organs. tones were much stronger and
here to help, with researchers LIMB did better than every other clearly audible in good violins,”
designing a bioadhesive inspired technology tested. says Cecchi.
by flatworms’ and mussels’ “Our material showed much-
ability to stick to some, frankly, better-improved safety and
gross surfaces. They’ve called it bleeding-control efficiency than
liquid-infused microstructured other commercial products,” says
bioadhesives, or LIMB. McGill University bioengineer
Some marine organisms Professor Jianyu Li. “Beyond
adhere to bio-fouled surfaces bleeding control, our material
with adhesives that feature could one day replace wound
microstructural architecture and sutures or deliver drugs to
infused liquid, the team write provide therapeutic effects.”
22 COSMOS MAGAZINE
GOT A STORY? Give us a shout at
contribute@cosmosmagazine.com
Our dedicated Greenlight team is going bush, to tell stories from across the
nation about the people, places and industries working towards that future:
facing climatic change and innovating to confront it.
24 COSMOS MAGAZINE
NEXT BIG THING
the challenges that I have faced to be in this equity, and I try to support staff and the Australian Institute for Bioengi-
position. I found that a lot of people relate, students to grow as more effective leaders neering and Nanotechnology, University
especially when they come from a different and create social good. of Queensland. Her pioneering research
culture and a different language as I have. The reality is that university work uses a nanocellulose platform technology
When I came to Australia, I faced the is very challenging. You need to have a to develop innovative materials for diverse
challenges of how to adopt Australian passion for science and the drive to make a applications.
cosmosmagazine.com 25
Fluid
thinking
saving the
planet
The revolutionary
vortex fluidic device
(VFD) has the world
of chemistry in a spin,
writes COLIN RASTON In 2015, Professor Raston
was awarded an Ig Nobel
Prize “for inventing a
chemical recipe to partially
un-boil an egg.” Today, the
VFD (right) is being used in
I
wanted to make a hundreds of applications,
difference and 25 years with no end in sight
ago I completely embraced the concept
of Green Chemistry. The idea says,
“Let’s start all over again and make chemis-
try ‘benign by design’.” Chemistry, it’s
As chemists, we can’t just keep doing highly unlikely you will get that
more of the same without regard to the funding.
environment. Enough’s enough. And I Green Early in my research in Green
think society finally gets it. Despite what Chemis- Chemistry I was interested in apply-
some politicians were trying to tell us even try is not a ing these green concepts into continuous
a few years ago, climate change is real – it’s band-aid approach. flow processing. It’s a no-brainer: if you’re
measurable. We’ve got bushfires and floods. It’s making sure that we don’t create doing your research and you pass some liquid
And we’ve got plastics in the environment something that has a negative impact on through a reactor and it’s flowing through
and in the oceans. the environment, and is sustainable. When and flowing out, then you can do all the
In chemistry, it’s gone from being almost it was first proposed, it was a paradigm fundamental science, and guess what? Unlike
like a moral obligation to go down that green shift, and as president of the Royal Austral- batch processing, it’s got scalability already
path to a question of time before it’s a legal ian Chemical Institute, I helped get a lot factored into it from the outset, so that the
ISABEL PAVIA / GETTY IMAGES
obligation. of people involved. That ultimately led to same research device can be your processing
The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry, securing the Australian Research Council device. This way you can fast-track produc-
laid out by Paul Anastas and John Warner, Centre of Excellence in Green Chemistry. tion, potentially bypassing the pilot stages
say that you don’t just tweak a process to Globally, it’s now a big movement. These that you’d normally have to do for conven-
make it cleaner, because you only get so far days, if you’re doing any kind of chemistry tional batch processing.
– you’re still going to generate waste if you and applying to a funding agency, and you I was thinking about trying to make
use the same toxic reagents in your process. don’t take on board the principles of Green nanomaterials under continuous flow, and
26 COSMOS MAGAZINE
NEXT BIG THING
We recently published a paper in A paper has just come out showing how
Chemical Science showing how immiscible we can make graphene oxide. There are lots
liquids behave at very small dimensions. of applications of graphene oxide, but the
Immiscible liquids are the ones you don’t way they traditionally make it uses concen-
normally think of mixing – like oil and trated sulfuric acid and toxic metals. We’ve
water. But we showed how the VFD can developed a process using our VFD with
mix immiscible fluids down to nanometre close to zero waste. All you need is aqueous
dimensions. It took over 100,000 experi- hydrogen peroxide and graphite. We call it
ments to figure it out, but the consequences GGO – green graphene oxide. It’s trade-
are huge. We’re making emulsions with marked.
implications for everything from drug We’ve also published work on using the
delivery to salad dressings. VFD to extract DNA out of extinct species
We published on this recently in Nature: that have been preserved in formalin. Some
Science of Food. We put nanoparticles of fish of these species are over 150 years old.
oil into apple juice. If you use a homogen- We are using the VFD to amplify the
iser, then everyone can taste and smell detection of biomarkers. Initially, it was
the fish oil. But if you make it at focused on COVID-19 – a test that took
nanometre scale in the VFD, four hours comes down to four minutes in
kids can’t tell the differ- the VFD. In the future there are some good
ence between drinking applications of the VFD in wine processing
apple juice and drink- because you’re not adding chemicals. At
Understanding how ing apple juice with certain processing parameters, we can cut
fluids flow has been all the good Omega carbon nanotubes down to specific lengths
3 in it. for applications in devices. That’s very big
one of the great So, what’s the too.
unsolved questions VFD? It’s basically Because we now understand the fluid
of science. a rotating test tube flow in the device, it’s accelerating more
with a little lip at the and more applications. Even though we’ve
top, and you tilt it off published over 100 papers on applications
axis at 45°. You’ve got of the VFD, we still haven’t got to the end of
liquid in there, and then you the beginning.
introduce spinning mechanical My interest in chemistry “exploded”
energy into that liquid. Now you’ve in year 12 at John Curtin High School in
got the maximum cross-factor gravity Perth in 1967. My chemistry teacher blew
pushing down, and you have centrifugal my mind. He was very young – Mr Stock-
force holding the liquid against the tube. dale. He’d been teaching in the country, but
The device is only 20mm in diameter and he came to Curtin – and he just had it all
about 20cm long, but you can build bigger together.
units for high-volume processing. That’s Our school overlooked Fremantle
all it is. You can have jet feeds delivering Harbour, and at the time they were blasting
reagent liquids to the inside of the tube. And for a deep water channel. We would look out
as they’re whirling up and coming out of the the classroom window and periodically see
tube, they’re undergoing all these changes. these massive plumes of water going up after
This is your continuous flow process. these explosions. And he’d say, “Oh, I can do
I wanted to do it by applying clean mechan- With this device, you get the formation better than that.”
ical energy rather than adding any kind of of Faraday waves in the liquid, and you get He’d then set up experiments that were
auxiliary chemical. And that ultimately led Coriolis forces from the base of the tube. very exciting. But afterwards we’d sit down
to the design of the vortex fluidic device – the And all this mechanical energy is imparted and go through all the chemistry to explain
VFD. This is the device that won me and my down to less than one micron in dimension it. It was then I realised that if you completely
colleagues the Ig Nobel Prize in 2015. regimes. Knowing this is the key to all these understand your chemistry, you understand
VORTEX FLUIDIC TECHNOLOGIIES
Understanding how fluids flow has other wonderful applications. your surroundings. I haven’t looked back.
been one of the great unsolved questions of With the VFD we can partially unboil
science. Now, by understanding how liquids an egg, which we do by refolding proteins. COLIN RASTON AO FAA is Professor in
flow in our vortex fluidic device, simply by Protein folding is a huge deal for the pharma- Clean Technology at Flinders University.
applying mechanical energy, we take a huge ceutical industry. We’ve also been able to He is a former President of the Royal
step forward. The application potential is accelerate a variety of enzymatic reactions, Australian Chemical Institute. He is a
immense. which is another big deal. champion of Green Chemistry.
cosmosmagazine.com 27
Tower
of
power Concentrated solar
power (CSP) has had a
difficult past, but it remains
in the conversation as a
T
he crop growing from the
reddish Victorian dirt was renewable energy alternative.
more War of the Worlds than RACHEL WILLIAMSON
Clarkson’s Farm: a field of 300
giant 4 x 5 metre mirrors, gently tilting on examines CSP’s history –
individual axles, were harvesting sunlight.
The solar bounty was concentrated into and possible future.
a beam that can melt steel, then aimed at what
looked like an enormous 4m2 theatre light, mounted
at the top of a steel tower.
“Don’t look at the collector,” reminds John
Lasich. The panel of miniature made-for-space solar
photovoltaic (PV) cells topping the tower can withstand
the laser-like brightness; the human eye cannot.
I am standing with Lasich, inventor of this solar
thermal power plant and founder of RayGen, beside
one of four fields of heliostats – mirrors – at RayGen’s
under-construction concentrated solar and energy
storage pilot in Carwarp, a farming community in the
north of Victoria. The forbidding glow of the towers
looms over us as we tour the crusty-dirt worksite.
RayGen’s system borrows heavily from
concentrated solar power (CSP), specifically the
type known as the power tower. Twelve years ago it
was supposed to be Australia’s path to a solar energy
future. Today, it’s an also-ran, damned by failure and
overtaken by cheaper, faster solar PV and wind.
And yet Lasich says the time has come – not for
CSP, but for his version, which incorporates some
CSP elements with other tech to solve the increasingly
urgent problem of solar and wind upsetting the
stability of the electricity grid.
But we’re discussing energy in Australia, where
no two people think the same.
RayGen’s former overseer at ARENA, Dominic
Zaal, says Lasich’s design actually solves a small-scale
power problem similar to those faced by remote mine
sites.
28 COSMOS MAGAZINE
SOLAR POWER
cosmosmagazine.com 29
RayGen competitor, Vast Solar, says it is solving the
grid problem with new-and-improved traditional CSP.
BloombergNEF (new energy finance) analyst
Jenny Chase says the grid problem is already being
solved with lithium-ion batteries; CSP, she says, is for
men with an engine “fetish”.
Energy expert Tristan Edis denies grid stability is
a problem at all.
The day may be arriving when CSP technology can
claim its place in Australia’s factionalised renewable
energy tableau, but it must first prove one thing: that
it can work.
And it is complicated: the mini PV panels (100 Beyond Zero Emissions analysed Australia’s
times more expensive – but 1000 times more alternatives to coal and gas power and landed on CSP.
powerful – than a regular PV panel) generate normal The starting place for their campaign was Port Augusta.
solar power for the grid, but also heat. Water that flows Coal had been good to Port Augusta, but left
behind the collector to keep it cool is heated to 90°C a terrible legacy. From 1954, three power plants
and piped back to a 16,000m3 ‘hot’ pit. It can then be employed generations of workers, but in early
used at will to boil ammonia (which has a boiling point 2012 Playford B, the country’s dirtiest coal plant,
under 90°C) to turn a turbine to generate as much as was mothballed. Its neighbour, Northern Power
17 hours of non-solar power. The cool water is held in Station, ran for three more years and took hundreds
a cold pit, ready to be “charged” again. of jobs when it closed. In March 2015, Beyond Zero
Vast Solar is yet to turn a sod on its newly acquired Emissions director Mark Ogge was called in to present
Port Augusta site in South Australia, but is confident to a sceptical Port Augusta council.
30 COSMOS MAGAZINE
SOLAR POWER
the 560°C molten salt from melting the hot tank. the country has also consistently undershot its own
Other assumptions behind the Aussie plant didn’t five-year-plan goals for installed CSP, something it
add up. It was supposed to produce almost three times rarely does in any other field.
cosmosmagazine.com 31
CSP: HOW IT WORKS
Arrays of curved mirrors – heliostats–concentrate the Tower/
receiver
Sun’s rays and direct them to the tower-top receiver,
which heats mineral salts to a molten 560°C. The salts’
heat is funnelled to a heat exchange, which boils water
to power steam turbines, while the hot storage tank
acts as a battery that can maintain supply through
fluctuating conditions. The cold storage feeds
the salts back to the tower for reheating.
Heliostats
Hot
storage
tank
CSIRO’s
Heat GenCost
exchange
Furnace report this year
priced solar PV with
Cold
storage two hours of battery storage
tank at just over $2000/kW.
Steam
turbine What now?
CSP and other funky-but-theoretical forms of
Electricity
generator storage struggle to compete against cheaper solar and
Condenser wind power backed by lithium-ion batteries, because
Electricity “The no special value is assigned to dispatchability. But the
C h i n e s e time may be coming in Australia when this kind of
government electricity does come with a value. As more coal power
said wind and PV are plants are shut down, there’s a view that these need to
creating problems because be replaced with something similar. And this is where
they’re intermittent generators, CSP could play a role, says Simon Corbell, the chair of
just like is happening in Australia,” Zaal the Clean Energy Investor Group.
says. “So what did the Chinese government “There will be a need for more dispatchable
say to fix that? They said if you want to put PV or generation,” he says. “Potentially solar thermal
wind into the system, you have to have 20% of that in will help meet that need. The commercial case
long duration energy storage.” will continue to strengthen and investors will be
But China can also build CSP towers at a price that watching that closely, particularly if there is also
would make them competitive in Australia, Zaal says the development of new markets that incentivise
– $US3000 per kilowatt – and make money selling dispatchable energy, such as some kind of capacity
power for $US70/MWh. NREL historical data shows mechanism in the National Energy Market.”
construction costs in the $US3000–5000/kW range. That could mean a kind of Renewable Energy
Wood says Vast Solar’s iteration of Aurora will cost Target for stored energy, the subsidy that allowed
$6000/kW – a considerable saving on the $22,000/ wind and solar to take off from 2001.
kW NREL cites for its Jemalong plant. RayGen’s Right now, companies like RayGen are positioning
Carwarp site will cost $30 million, but commercial themselves in the witheringly dubbed “rhombus
manager Dr Kira Rundel says they don’t have a of regret”, the area around Mildura where a lot of
breakdown of what that cost looks like at a per kilowatt intermittent wind and solar is packed close to an
level. However, she says the next project, a 300MW electricity grid that isn’t set up to transport it all. That’s
GREG BARTON
solar/150MW thermal storage plant in Yadnarie on led to massive curtailment – when the energy market
the Eyre Peninsula, will cost $1400/kW for the solar operator stops wind and solar farms from selling their
farm and $2000/kW for the 24-hour thermal storage. energy because the infrastructure can’t handle it.
SOLAR POWER
Vast Solar’s
concentrated solar
thermal power modules
are made up of 700
mirrors.
cosmosmagazine.com 33
BIOLUMINESCENCE
34 COSMOS MAGAZINE
LEFT: JAMES GARLICK. RIGHT: RIBEIRODOS SANTOS / GETTY IMAGES
cosmosmagazine.com 35
isitors to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,
Italy, may be so overcome with emotion
in the presence of great art that they
sometimes experience fainting,
hallucinations, and palpitations – a
cluster of symptoms known as Stendhal Syndrome.
But these feelings of intense wonder and awe are not
just limited to famous paintings and sculptures.
An eerie glow where the waves break. A flash
beneath our feet at the water’s edge. Tiny dots of light
on our skin. The balmy summer heat reminds us that
it’s beach-time, and those who linger after dark are generally associated with habitat, with pelagic and
often rewarded with visions of great delight. Glows of deep-sea species generally emitting blue light, coastal
light. Flashes so bright. marine species more often shifted toward green, and
Bioluminescence, or “living light”, has intrigued terrestrial and freshwater species typically shifted
humans for thousands of years. Aristotle wrote about Ctenophore comb jellies into yellow. There are deviations, however, such as the
sparks in the sea, marvelling at how these fires were (previous page and terrestrial railroad worm (Phrixothrix hirtus), which
not extinguished by water. opposite) flash brightly displays two rows of yellow-green lanterns along its
Bioluminescence is light made within the bodies using 10 different forms body, plus two red lanterns on its head.
of organisms. This cool light – in both meanings of the of proteins. Tomopterids At least 11 different types of luciferins are known,
word – gives off very little heat, and it’s fascinating. (above) spend their life along with dozens of associated luciferases, suggesting
The chemical reaction is similar in principle to that in the water column and, that bioluminescence has evolved independently
of a glow stick: two chemicals meet in the presence in addition to their body many different times on the tree of life. In fact,
of oxygen, resulting in light. In organisms, these glow, they have the as-yet recent studies have estimated this figure to be at least
two substances are substrates generically known unexplained ability to emit 94 times, and one study found that light production
as luciferins and enzymes generically known as yellow bioluminescent has evolved at least 27 different times in marine fishes
luciferases (both derive their names from the Latin mucus. Bioluminescence in alone. Luciferin-like proteins can even be found in
lucifer: light-bearer). cephalopods (below), such some non-luminous species, and can be stimulated to
Different colours of light are produced by changes as this squid, can appear produce light by exposure to luciferases.
in the polarisation and microclimate of the luciferins, as dots and stripes and Bioluminescence is more common than you
as well as by mixing and matching with structurally appears to be utilised as a might think. A 2017 study by the Monterey Bay
different luciferases. These different colours are means of communication. Aquarium Research Institute, in California, found
that bioluminescence occurred in more than 75% of
the deep-sea animals observed over 17 years of video
recordings. Indeed, in the inky darkness of this vast
and alien realm – often called the twilight zone –
bioluminescence is the dominant form of light.
Bioluminescence is found in more than
700 genera, including terrestrial plants, animals,
fungi, and bacteria, and notably almost every marine
phylum. So, if bioluminescence is so prevalent, it ALL ICONS: PHYLOPIC. FAR LEFT: THIERRY EIDENWEIL. ABOVE: NOAA /
36 COSMOS MAGAZINE
BIOLUMINESCENCE
a glowing cloud or as a steady internal or you can’t mate with, so photophore patterns may be
external light. For example, the sesame-seed-shaped one way to tell who’s who.
ostracods, known as “fireflies of the sea”, vomit up
bioluminescence, creating a distraction in the water. ONE PARTICULARLY STRIKING
During World War II, the Japanese army issued glow strategy is that of the anglerfishes.
packets of ‘sand’ to soldiers (actually dried ostracods). Like something out of science fiction,
The soldiers would pour a bit of this sand into the these have a stalk protruding from their forehead
palm of their hand, spit on it to activate it, then rub bearing a cluster of bioluminescent wormy-looking
their hands together to have enough light to read their appendages. Smaller predatory species are attracted
maps without giving away their location. by the lure of these glowing ‘worms’, which look like
cosmosmagazine.com 37
BIOLUMINESCENCE
Scintillon
own light, so that other organisms beneath them are a sports cap, so you can control the water flow. After
unable to see their silhouette. They can even change The glow show (above) dark, spritz some water on it, to elicit the magnificent
their output on the fly, for example dimming slightly of the lanternfish, blue flash. You may want to jump in and dance in the
to match a cloud passing overhead. These squids are includes light-producing glow, and that’s okay too. It isn’t harmful to us.
actually using bioluminescence for camouflage. photophores along its Noctiluca embodies both beauty and beast. Beauty,
ventral surface (belly), and in the sheer brilliance of its light. Unlike many types
MOST OF US DON’T HAVE access to remotely a nasal “headlight” organ. of nature’s luminescent displays, it’s easy to observe
operated vehicles or submarines to visit these denizens Research into aequorin, Noctiluca with the naked eye. And beast, in that
of the deep, but we can still see bioluminescence in the luminescence of the Noctiluca is an oxygen-sucking, ammonia-exuding,
action. Many zoos and aquariums exhibit flashlight crystal jelly Aequorea voracious pest.
fish with their blinky eyes or Aequorea in both its victoria (below), was I’m not being unkind. Noctiluca is an unusual
bioluminescence and fluorescence modes. awarded the 2008 Nobel type of algae that doesn’t photosynthesise, so rather
But the most wondrous experience is to play Prize in Chemistry, for the than making oxygen, it obtains it from the water. In
with sea sparkle at the beach. Not always, but often, development of its use as bloom concentrations, Noctiluca can strip the water
summertime beaches come alive at night with blue a gene marker and other of oxygen, leaving heavy breathers like fish and
vibrance akin to the signature hue of Avatar. biomedical applications. crustaceans gasping. And without photosynthesis, it
can’t make its own food, so it eats other organisms to
survive. Again, in bloom conditions, it can vacuum up
all the phytoplankton and even small zooplankton like
microcrustaceans, fish eggs, and fish fry. Worse, as it
ages it releases ammonia into the water. Often, these
blooms result in mass fish deaths.
Nutrient pollution from urban runoff and
aquaculture, combined with increasingly warmer
waters, mean Noctiluca is doing more of what it
does best. Don’t blame Noctiluca, however: it’s just
responding to the world we’re creating.
And remember: if you are lucky enough to
encounter sea sparkle on the type of low-energy beach
where small waves swirl around rocks, its sheer beauty
may cause Stendhal Syndrome.
cosmosmagazine.com 39
An illustration of the joint
NASA and ESA (European
Space Agency) concept
for a multiple-robot team
to return Perseverance’s Ascent Vehicle –MAV).
Martian samples back Perseverance would
to Earth. The current transport the sample
concept envisions tubes to the Lander, where with the samples, Also
delivering a Mars lander a Sample Transfer Arm shown is one of two
near Jezero Crater, where would place them into NASA Sample Recovery
Perseverance, right, the MAV, opposite top, Helicopters, which would
NASA / JPL-CALTECH
collects samples. A NASA which would take them travel to Mars on the
Sample Retrieval Lander, into Mars orbit. There, Sample Retrieval Lander
opposite bottom, would the Earth Return Orbiter, to support Perseverance
carry a rocket (the Mars above, would rendezvous if required.
PERSEVERANCE
Material retrieved from the Moon and asteroids is all very fascinating,
writes RICHARD A LOVETT, but it’s samples from Mars, projected
to reach Earth in the early 2030s, that has scientists most excited.
cosmosmagazine.com 41
T
wo years ago, a Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA) capsule
parachuted to Earth in the desert near
Woomera, South Australia. On board
were precious grains from the surface of the asteroid
Ryugu, whose secrets will be studied for years to come
in laboratories around the world.
Of course, it wasn’t the first time extraterrestrial
material had been brought back to Earth for study.
NASA’s Apollo program returned a total of 382 kilo-
grams of rocks from six separate Moon landings, and
the Soviets also successfully returned lunar soil samples
in three less-heralded robotic missions between 1970
and 1976. The Chinese have also entered the act, suc-
cessfully retrieving 2kg of lunar soil samples in Decem-
ber 2020 – only 10 days after JAXA’s asteroid triumph.
But the big prize for scientists salivating to get
extraterrestrial samples into their highest-tech lab
equipment is Mars.
The Moon is interesting because it was built from
pieces blown off the Earth by a giant collision and can
tell us much about our own planet’s history. Asteroids
are interesting because they contain fragments from
the early history of the Solar System, from which we can
piece together not only the origins of the Earth, but how
our planet may have acquired the building blocks of life. VIKING LIFE-TEST CONTROVERSY
But Mars? Since the 1970s, planetary scientists
have known that it had water, with rivers, lakes, and A primary mission of both As a video from the New
possibly an ocean. At one time it was warm and wet, and of NASA’s 1976 Viking Mexico Museum of Space
even as its lush, early climate faded, it still had parts that landers was to look not just History puts it, “evidence
may have looked a lot like portions of Iceland, Austral- for signs of ancient life on for life was seen, but no
ia, the Canadian Archipelago, the American Southwest, Mars, but signs that the bodies were found”.
and Chile’s Atacama Desert. And while some of these Red Planet might still be Just why isn’t clear,
earthly places are pretty barren, all have life. inhabited. although most scientists
If we’re looking for signs of one-time life on another To do this, they scooped don’t believe that the
planet – at least one we can get to with today’s technol- up soil samples and Viking experiments
ogy – Mars is the place. Not that this means Mars had conducted a number of actually found life. The
life. But there is little doubt that it was once habitable. tests, one of which was to leading theory is that
add a C14-labelled nutrient oxidising chemicals like
AUDACIOUS PLANS – AND HOW TO solution to the soils and perchlorates, now known
IMPROVE THEM incubate them. to be contained in Martian
The search for signs life in the rocks and soils of Mars If Earthlike life was soils, could have reacted COSMOS • A PERSONAL VOYAGE / DRUYAN-SAGAN ASSOCIATES, INC; NASA
is nothing new. NASA’s two mid-1970s Viking landers present, the theory was, with the nutrients and
were primitive by today’s standards, but they still were it would metabolise these released C14-containing
able to carry chemical labs whose primary goal was to nutrients and produce C14- gases, without the need
find metabolic traces of life on the Martian surface. containing gases such as for life.
(They failed to do so, though the results were not carbon dioxide or methane. But other scientists
without controversy: see “Viking life test”, at right). Best known for his acclaimed All of the other tests disagree, and one of
Since then, the focus has shifted to hunting for signs public television series came up negative, NASA’s currently operating
of one-time habitable environments, many of which Cosmos, Carl Sagan (top including ones looking rovers, Curiosity, has
have been found by the last suite of NASA rovers: right) poses with a model of for organic carbon repeatedly detected
Spirit and Opportunity (2004–18), Curiosity (2012 the Viking lander in Death (from bits and pieces of anomalous levels of
to present), and Perseverance (February 2021 to pres- Valley, California, in the microorganisms) in the soil methane, a compound that
ent). But as sophisticated as these rovers have become, 1970s. The Viking spacecraft samples. But, the “labelled might (or might not) be
they are no match for Earth’s labs, which can perform (above right) flew with release” experiment – as a sign that Mars still has
microanalyses impossible to do with even the most its lander encased in a it was called – did indeed life, waiting to be more
sophisticated robotic laboratories. “bioshield”. produce positive results. conclusively detected.
42 COSMOS MAGAZINE
PERSEVERANCE
Now, the dream is nearing reality. Last July, NASA NASA has compared it to a relay team, in which, in the
and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the initial concept, six separate vehicles were going to be
final phases in an ambitious program to get pristine involved.
Martian material samples back to Earth by 2033. And The first was Perseverance. Its job was to collect
not just one sample, but as many as 33, each from a dif- samples, and, like a sea turtle nesting its eggs on a beach,
ferent site, totalling as much as 4.5–5kg. deposit them in a series of caches. Perseverance would
Yes, that’s a tiny fraction of what Apollo brought be followed by two other landers. One would deploy an
back from the Moon, but given the distance, it’s a stun- The harsh landscape of the ESA-built Sample Fetch Rover designed to chase down
ULYANA HORODYSKYJ PENA
ning step forward. The program is called Mars Sample Atacama Desert, Chile, has Perseverance’s trail, retrieve the samples from their
Return (MSR) and at its heart is the Perseverance rover been used for Mars expedition caches (and possibly from Perseverance itself, if it was
and its plucky helicopter Ingenuity. simulations. Covering still functional), and bring them back to a second lander.
Getting a sample back from Mars isn’t a simple pro- more than 100,000km2, the Quick, fast, and efficient: that was the goal.
cess – it’s much more complex than Apollo bringing Atacama is the driest non- “The engineer in me was fascinated by [that], be-
rocks back from the Moon or JAXA visiting an asteroid. polar desert in the world. cause it’s designed to travel much faster than previ-
cosmosmagazine.com 43
ous Mars rovers, probably about four or five times as
quickly,” says MSR program manager Richard Cook,
who’s based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
in Pasadena, California.
The second lander, called the Sample Retrieval
Lander, would carry a rocket called the Mars Ascent
Vehicle. The samples would be put in the rocket (which
in artists’ renderings looks a lot like a torpedo). That
rocket would blast off from the lander and rendezvous
with a sixth and final vehicle, an ESA-built orbiter that
would scoop up the sample package, stow it away, and
ease out of orbit for a slow return to Earth. The illustration below focuses
“Relay team” is indeed a good description, with the on a concept for a proposed
samples playing the role of the baton. The plan was also NASA Mars lander-and-rocket
rather complex, with a lot of parts that had to operate combination that would
flawlessly, millions of kilometres from Earth. Auda- play a key role in getting
cious barely begins to describe it. Mars samples back to Earth. HEROIC HELICOPTER
The current plan is still audacious … but two of the The machine at bottom, the
major parts have been eliminated and a new, never-be- Sample Retrieval Lander, When it was included on of those back-and-forths
fore-dreamed-of backup has been added. would carry a small rocket, NASA’s Perseverance reduces the helicopter’s
The deleted parts are the Sample Fetch Rover and above, about 3m tall, called rover as an additional maximum speed across the
the lander intended to deploy it. Perseverance has the Mars Ascent Vehicle 1.8kg of payload, the terrain by a factor of four.
performed so well, NASA scientists said in a 27 July (MAV) to the Martian surface. mission’s tiny Ingenuity “We quickly figured out
briefing, that there’s little fear it will perish before the After loading the rover’s helicopter was supposed that if we had to scout out
Sample Retriever Lander arrives in 2028. After all, its sealed sample tubes into to be a one-month affair, every site before we landed,
cousin, NASA’s Curiosity rover, is still going strong the rocket, the lander would intended simply to test we would dramatically
more than 10 years on, and NASA’s Mars rovers have launch the MAV into orbit whether it was possible restrict operations,” Matt
a good track record for being durable. That means that around the Red Planet. to fly in the thin air of Golombek, a planetary
Mars. But the intrepid geologist at NASA’s Jet
helicopter wasn’t just a Propulsion Laboratory,
crowd-pleaser for space said at the 2022 Lunar
buffs; it worked wildly and Planetary Science
beyond expectations. As Conference in The
of midsummer 2022, it had Woodlands, Texas. In
completed 29 flights – 24 fact, there were concerns
more than planned – and that the helicopter would
proven itself an invaluable eventually get outrun by
companion for the the rover and have to be
Perseverance rover. abandoned.
Initially, its biggest What was needed was
limitation had been the to find a way to find safe
combination of its three- landing zones from space,
minute battery life and the so the helicopter could
need to find safe landing go directly from one to
sites before its battery another. And luckily, that
died. The safest thing to was Golombek’s specialty
do was to scout no more – something he’d been
than 60 or 70 seconds doing ever since the Mars
ahead, then return to its Pathfinder landing in 1997.
prior base to recharge its “My day job is selecting
batteries, while scientists landing sites on Mars,” he
back on Earth looked to says. “I’ve spent most of my
see if, in the process, it career looking for rocks.”
NASA / JPL-CALTECH
44 COSMOS MAGAZINE
PERSEVERANCE
This annotated map (above) instead of relying on the Fetch Rover (and its lander),
shows the locations where NASA will simply aim to land the Sample Return
Perseverance collected its first vehicle, with its ascent rocket, as close as possible to
witness tube and filled its first Perseverance and let Perseverance roll over to deliver
samples. The name that the the samples itself.
rover’s science and operations That’s a major improvement in the plan, Michael
teams used to define a rock Meyer, NASA’s lead scientist on the project, told
target on the Martian surface Cosmos, because however much success recent mis-
NASA / JPL-CALTECH / MSS; NASA X 2 CR NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ASU/MSSS EDIT
appears at the top of each sions have had, landing on Mars “[is] always a risky
inset image. Also indicated is proposition”.
the Martian day, or sol, of the How close to Perseverance the Sample Retrieval
rover’s mission and whether Lander will set down is yet to be determined. “Right
the image shows a target that now, I think they are considering about 270 metres as
has been abraded – by drilling the closest distance,” Meyer says. Landing closer, is
the upper few millimetres of technically possible, but not worth the risk of acciden-
the rock surface – or is one tally coming down on top of Perseverance. Also, he
from which a core sample was says, “part of the trade [off ] is fuel versus landing accu-
taken (the anomalous Roubion racy. The more pinpoint you want to be, the more fuel
sample was drilled, but no you need to carry.”
material collected). All things At the same time, landing reasonably close is im-
being equal, these samples portant, because in addition to the ascent vehicle, the
and up to 27 others will leave lander will now carry two Ingenuity-class helicopters.
Mars’ surface aboard the Mars That’s because the current helicopter has proven
Ascent Vehicle (left). so durable that NASA has decided that similar ones,
cosmosmagazine.com 45
equipped with some form of grabbing device, can serve PREPARING TO SEARCH FOR LIFE ON
as backup sample-retrievers if Perseverance itself is no MARS… ON EARTH
longer up to the task. These helicopters, however, have
limited range, so it’s important not to hedge so far in Before Perseverance set and expedition leader
favour of safety that the lander comes down out of heli- off to collect its precious for Science in the Wild,
copter range from Perseverance. “The goal is a minimal samples, scientists were a citizen science group
but safe distance,” Meyer says. honing their techniques based in Boulder, Colorado.
on Earth. One place that Also useful, Horodyskyj
MEANWHILE, BACK ON MARS… particularly appealed to Pena says, is to study
In the meantime, Perseverance is busily collecting them was the driest place rocks on Earth comparable
samples. As of 24 August, Meyer says, it had 15 on on Earth, Chile’s Atacama in age to those
board, with more soon to come. Many of these samples Desert, where the city of Perseverance is exploring
are duplicates, taken two from a site. The plan is that Calama went 401 years – on Mars. Particularly
when the total reaches about 20, one of each pair will from 1570 to 1971 – without important are those in
be deposited in a cache where, if something disastrous The primary instrument a single recorded drop the Pilbara region of
happens to the rover and its onboard collection of aboard Perseverance (above) of rain. Except around Western Australia (Read
for coring rock samples is springs and other water more about NASA’s visit
its go-go gadget-arm drill. A sources, there’s not a there in Cosmos 86). At
concept model (left) of NASA’s lot of signs of life on the 3.5 billion years old, they
orbiting sample container Atacama’s surface – where are only 300 million years
shows how tubes of Martian harsh sunlight and extreme younger than those in
rock and soil samples will be temperatures also mimic Jezero Crater. They also
NASA / JPL-CALTECH X 2/JPL-CALTECH
stored while being returned those of Mars. “NASA have similar mineralogy to
to Earth; at bottom left sits a has used this site as an Jezero rocks and preserve
model of the sample-holding analogue for Mars in order ancient structures known
tube. The sample container to test instrumentation as stromatolites, which
will help keep contents at less [and] see what it takes appear to have been
than 30°C to help preserve to detect the slightest created by large mats of
the Mars material in its most hints life,” says Ulyana bacteria that grew into
natural state. Horodyskyj Pena, founder pillars a metre or so high.
PERSEVERANCE
samples, the backup cache can still be retrieved by the Two of the many moving
Sample Retrieval Lander and its twin helicopters. (If parts (above right) in the first
the rover operates as expected, the duplicates in the Mars retrieval plan have as
cache will be not be retrieved.) of mid-2022 been deleted.
Already, though, scientists are learning a lot about The Sample Fetch Rover, at
the rocks they are collecting. One big surprise has been left, and the lander intended
the discovery that even though Perseverance’s landing to deploy it aren’t necessary,
site in 45-kilometre-wide Jezero Crater is known to say NASA scientists, because
have once contained a large lake, the rocks in its vicinity Perseverance has performed
weren’t composed of the lakebed sediments. Instead, so well that there’s little
they are volcanic rock that must have been there as bed- fear it will perish before the
rock before the water arrived. Sample Retriever Lander
That’s an exciting find, scientists say, because vol- arrives in 2028. Deleted parts
canic rocks are known to be excellent timekeepers, con- notwithstanding, it will still be
taining crystals whose levels of certain trace isotopes an outstanding feat for NASA
reveals the precise moment when they formed. That and ESA to successfully get
means that these crystals provide a very precise date the samples off Mars (below
for the formation of the lakebed, and by extension an right) and successfully back
important constraint on when in the planet’s history to the Earth.
the lake existed. (It has to be younger than the volcanic
rocks beneath it.)
“This will address some major questions,” says
the rover’s project scientist Ken Farley, of California
Institute of Technology (Caltech). “When was Mars’s
climate conducive to lakes and rivers on the planet’s
surface, and when did it change to the very cold and dry
conditions we see today?”
Also valuable is the fact that by happenstance, Per-
severance came down right near the boundary of two
distinct volcanic formations, now named the Máaz and story of how the lake in Jezero Crater formed – put-
Séítah. ting together the ancient history of what happened at
The Máaz formation (whose name means “Mars” Jezero Crater.”
in the Navajo Native American language) appears to be With that part of its mission completed, Perse-
the younger of the two, Vivian Sun, a planetary scientist verance is now on its way to climbing out of the crater
and systems engineer at JPL said earlier this year at the floor, beginning by exploring rock formations along the
annual Lunar and Planetary Sciences Meeting in The slopes of a giant delta, formed when a billions-of-years-
Woodlands, Texas. ago river spilled from the highlands, through the crater
Séítah appears to be a bit older (though how much rim, and into the lake.
older won’t be known until samples are returned to Now high and dry, the delta marks the spot where
Earth). Its name means “amidst the sand” in the Navajo flowing water hit the lake, slowed, and dropped its
language – an apt description of why NASA flight engi- sediments in what is now a steep bluff about 45m tall.
neers had marked this region on landing maps with the Already Perseverance is collecting rock samples from
equivalent of a skull-and-crossbones. around its base – rocks that may even preserve ancient
Getting samples from Máaz was easy. It was the signs of life, if life once flourished in the shallow waters
area in which Perseverance landed, chosen because near the delta.
it is firm, flat, and largely free of dangerous boulders. And from there? Who knows what treasures Perse-
Getting samples from Séítah was harder, because the verance will find as it climbs through the delta, then up
region really is full of potentially fatal sand traps. That’s the ancient river channel toward the highlands beyond.
where the Ingenuity helicopter proved its worth, not After all, it still has at least 25 remaining sample tubes,
only helping Perseverance locate suitable rocks for and six years to find the best places to fill them before
NASA / JPL-CALTECH X 2CREDIT
study, but assisting it in plotting an approach to them the Sample Retrieval Lander comes to complete its
and then a safe retreat. But getting multiple samples mission. With that kind of timeline, Perseverance has
from each formation, along with other geological evi- plenty of opportunity to live up to its name.
dence about their settings was worth the effort.
“Even before landing, our science team realised RICHARD A LOVETT is based in Portland, Oregon.
that understanding the crater floor is a very high prior- His previous story, on DART’s mission, appeared in
ity,” Sun says. “The goal is to piece together the overall Issue 94.
cosmosmagazine.com 47
The medical
WHAT-IF
that could change
clinical trials forever
The 2009 emergence of H1N1 led a few medical professionals to
realise how unprepared they were. An informal group including
an ICU doctor, care clinicians and a statistician met irregularly
for more than a decade to create a thought experiment – a
groundbreaking system that could quickly gather and analyse
data and offer treatment suggestions for an unknown pandemic
pathogen. As TANIA EWING reports, their timing was impeccable.
B
efore 2009, the town of La Gloria, about Professor Steve Webb, an intensive care doctor
200 kilometres east of Mexico City in at Royal Perth Hospital, remembers the winter of
Veracruz province, Mexico, was little 2009 as one where “we were flooded with swine flu”.
known and generally unremarkable. In the hospital’s 24-bed intensive care units (ICUs),
Perched amid mountain peaks at 2460 metres up to half the beds were filled with people infected
elevation, the town of about 2200 residents is a with H1N1 and on ventilators.
major pig-farming centre: the Granjas Carroll de “I remember thinking ‘We need to be better
Mexico farm about 8km from La Gloria raised nearly prepared for this sort of thing’,” Webb says. He and
1 million pigs in 2008. a group of international colleagues wrote a paper
In 2009 a new strain of the H1N1 influenza that was published in the New England Journal of
emerged. Within weeks, swine flu (as it became Medicine (NEJM) on the swine flu pandemic. While
known) was spread by international travellers, the paper largely described the cases, the severity of
eventually affecting 74 countries and, according to the disease and its impact on ICUs, “it didn’t – and
the World Health Organization, killing as many as couldn’t – detail what treatments had worked for
575,000 people. Swine flu’s zoonotic origins have which patients. In ICU we just threw whatever we
never been confirmed, but La Gloria was in the frame could at patients to keep them alive.”
PEDRO PARDO / GETTY IMAGES
early as a likely starting place because one of the Webb started wondering about ways in which the
earliest cases – in a five-year-old boy named Édgar next pandemic could provide better and timely infor-
Hernández – was traced there. (Much later, in 2016, a mation to clinicians about which treatments worked,
research team from the Mount Sinai School of Medi- and which did not. By definition, a pandemic has
cine, US, declared that the virus likely came from pigs thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of cases –
in a very small region of central Mexico, but didn’t so getting the numbers wouldn’t be a problem. How Mural by urban artist
name La Gloria.) could they collect and use that data better? Applez, in Mexico City.
cosmosmagazine.com 49
Flipping the clinical trial paradigm
The WHO has identified influenza pandemics as one
of the top 10 threats to global health. In an influenza
pandemic, such as swine flu, most people are admitted
to ICUs with what is called Community-Acquired
Pneumonia (CAP). CAP is the most common form
of pneumonia; its causes are bacteria or bacteria-like
organisms, fungi or viruses, such as swine flu.
In the years following the swine flu pandemic,
Webb and his colleagues focused on developing a new
type of clinical trial. Standard clinical trials are labori-
ous in their genesis, often taking up to a year to begin:
funding and ethics approval must be obtained and pro-
tocols developed before patients are even recruited.
“What we needed was a clinical trial that could be
up and running within a couple of weeks after a pan-
demic hit,” Webb says.
But how could they streamline the clunky, bu-
reaucracy-laden, decades-old clinical trial process
into one that could adapt to whatever a pandemic
would bring, while retaining statistical rigour and
patient safety?
In 2010, father-and-son team Drs Don and Scott
Berry – experts in clinical trial statistics based in
Texas – had designed the I-SPY2 trial, aimed at test-
ing new drugs in high-risk breast cancer patients. It
was a novel approach to bring multiple interventions
into a large single trial. Its secret lay in Bayesian sta-
tistics, which involves the continual reassessment
of competing hypotheses in the presence of new ev-
idence. In essence, Bayesian statistics allows the trial
Webb – then and now also Professor of Critical Unknown artist’s work in design to shift and adapt as knowledge is gained. Ac-
Care Research at Monash University in Melbourne Pontefract, northern England. cording to Scott Berry, traditional clinical trials are
– and a group of intensive care clinician researchers based around “one question and once that question
including Derek Angus, Chair of Critical Care at the is answered, then the whole trial is dismantled. And
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Roger the whole process is rebuilt from scratch to answer
Lewis, an emergency doctor and statistician in Los the next question,” he says, speaking from his home
Angeles, started to meet around once a year to work in Austin, the Texas state capital.
out what could be learnt from what went wrong “It’s equivalent to building an arena for a football
in 2009. They all had big day jobs; the pandemic game and then knocking it down and rebuilding it
thinking was just a side hustle. They’d squeeze their again for the next game. In a pandemic we knew we
catchups onto the back of international meetings, wouldn’t have that luxury of time.”
connected by a certainty there would be another To the Berrys, broadening the scope of their
pandemic that would likely be a respiratory disease, Bayesian-based platform trial to a global pandemic
and a drive to minimise a new infection’s potential made sense. By the time the Berrys joined Webb and
devastation. Steve Webb colleagues in 2010, the still small group had swelled
The only unknowable was when the next pan- Professor of Critical Care with members from Europe, Australia, the US, New
demic would arrive. Research, Monash University Zealand and Canada. They continued to convene when
they could, still sneaking in meetings after symposi-
ums and sessions at critical care meetings and confer-
Standard clinical trials are “equivalent to ences they were already slotted, and funded, to attend.
OLI SCARFF / GETTY IMAGES
50 COSMOS MAGAZINE
REMAP-CAP
cosmosmaga .com 51
52 COSMOS MAGAZINE
REMAP-CAP
By 2019 more than 50 hospitals in more than a “People were coming into ICUs in severe
dozen countries were participating in REMAP-CAP,
looking at treatments – antivirals and antibiotics – respiratory distress, and we neither knew what
in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe on was causing it, beyond a form of flu, and more
people in ICU with community-acquired pneumo-
nia. There had been some moments of concern that
importantly we didn’t know how to treat it”
a pandemic had already arrived: 2012 saw the MERS
virus outbreak, and then in 2015, Zika. Despite ini- be an influx of people, “even though at that stage we
tial alarm, neither became global threats. weren’t sure that the disease would spread outside of
REMAP-CAP had reached what Scott Berry calls China or even outside of Wuhan”, Webb says.
“sleeping mode”: recruiting CAP patients, still work- The confusion surrounding the H1N1 pandemic
ing out operational issues but effectively ready to go. occurred because of the sudden influx of people with
Or so they thought. In December 2019 came CAP into ICUs in the early days of the pandemic.
reports of a new respiratory disease in Wuhan, “People were coming into ICUs in severe respirato-
China. “But we still thought it was more likely to be ry distress, and we neither knew what was causing it,
another MERS or Zika,” Scott Berry recalls. beyond a form of flu, and more importantly we didn’t
By January 2020 reports were escalating that the know how to treat it,” he recalls.
virus was spreading rapidly and causing high mor- Because REMAP-CAP sites globally were al-
bidity. “It started to be a real thing then, a real risk ready evaluating the use of corticosteroids on bacte-
that this was the pandemic we had expected” Berry rial pneumonia, the team woke up the sleeping pan-
says. “We still weren’t sure, but we shifted staff and Scott Berry demic stratification in the protocol for the Wuhan
thought, let’s get ready.” President & Senior disease, as it was then known.
In London on 17 January 2020, Steve Webb re- Statistical Scientist, REMAP-CAP recruited its first COVID patient
ceived an email from Antwerp University’s Professor Berry Consultants LLC on 10 March, the day before the WHO declared the
Herman Goossens, the coordinator of PREPARE, the SARS-Cov-2 virus a pandemic.
EU organisation that was the first to provide fund-
ing for REMAP-CAP. “He said that his contacts had The pandemic no one wanted (but had
warned him of a person-to-person transmission of a been planning for)
pneumonia-causing virus in Wuhan in China, which By definition, pandemics are unpredictable and
meant this could be the ‘big one’,” Webb recalls. emerge suddenly. So REMAP-CAP’s premise – to
The REMAP-CAP team started flipping the small have a protocol and infrastructure in place in order to
number of global sites they already had gathering CAP generate critical evidence, efficiently, about optimal
data into getting ready for what they feared would treatment so that clinicians and policy makers can
utilise that information to improve patient outcomes
ADAPTIVE TRIAL – seems challenging, to say the least.
Traditional clinical trials just don’t work in a pan-
In an adaptive trial, takes the same trials as Lime green is an example demic. Conventional trials are a fixed design, com-
continual data analysis on the previous page. of an innovation on the paring treatment A with treatment B, with no capac-
allows researchers to Patients are progressively pink treatment, which ity to change the treatments or sample size or even
assess the efficacy randomised into three is showing benefit. The analyse the results until recruitment is complete.
and safety of multiple initial treatments. Data is innovation is a success, The static and rigid design of these trials simply
treatments in real time. collected and analysed and supersedes the pink, didn’t meet the needs of a global disease that would
Unlike a standard clinical continuously. As the which although successful be filling hospital ICUs. The REMAP-CAP team had
trial, participants can green is shown not to be has less efficacy than the learnt this back in 2010 and 2014.
continue to join the beneficial, randomisation subsequently developed At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,
study, and data analysis proportions are updated treatment. numerous potential treatments emerged to assist
will randomise them and future participants are As this moment in time those who were the sickest. Suggestions ranged
towards more beneficial randomised towards the ends, beneficial treatments from the head-lice treatment ivermectin, to bleach,
treatments. Adaptive trials blue and red treatments. have large numbers of steroids,and to plasma from those who had recov-
improve health outcomes Research continues. participants without having ered. Some of these things may have proved helpful,
for participants, avoid New treatments are added sacrificed the important others may have been harmful – but until and unless
ambiguous results, and for trial (purple and pink). safety steps that a clinical these treatments were randomised, it would just be
can end when sufficient More data results in more trial provides, while less guesswork. Regardless of the number of doctors and
data have accrued rather knowledge: less beneficial beneficial treatments aren’t healthcare workers observing improvements due to
than when a pre-specified treatments dwindle as required to play out a one treatment over another, without randomisation
sample size is met. randomisation proportions costly and time-consuming these observations would remain anecdotal – an un-
The example at left are updated. phase. reliable way to guide treatment.
cosmosmagazine.com 53
The United Kingdom was one of the first coun- high costs of trials in the US and complex regulatory
tries outside of China to be swamped by COVID- environment. The University of Pittsburgh Medical
19. The REMAP-CAP program was selected as a Center, with its multiple ICUs, recruited many pa-
national priority trial on 1 April by chief medical of- tients while covering its own costs.
ficers across the UK. Most ICUs took part, enrolling Overseeing it all was Cameron Green, based at
patients who were admitted for treatment in inten- Monash University, liaising with international trial
sive care. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) coordinators, regional coordinators, statisticians
already had an embedded research arm in its hospital and database providers, adding new domains as new
system with paid research coordinators who facili- treatments needed testing and working on contracts
tated the uptake of the REMAP-CAP protocols. with every ICU that came on board.
“These research coordinators were taken off the “All the time we wanted to make it easy for the
trials they were on – cardiovascular, cancer etc – and ICU staff to enrol patients, so we worked tirelessly to
suddenly we had an enormous number of patients en- Colin McArthur make the process seamless, because without the ICU
rolling into a whole series of investigational treatments, Director of Research, staff on board we would never have managed,” he says.
literally just months into the pandemic,” Webb says. Auckland City Hospital In Australia the philanthropic Minderoo Founda-
A key to the REMAP-CAP program is that once a tion boosted funding for REMAP-CAP, “because it
treatment is looking favourable it’s randomised into revolutionised the global treatment of COVID-19 in
the treatment of more patients, effectively speed- critically ill people in an incredibly short timeframe”,
ing up the learnings of the clinical trial. Information according to Dr Steve Burnell, who led Minderoo’s
from patients already participating in the study is COVID-19 response.
used to help guide the treatment of new patients Webb says that Minderoo’s foundational fund-
joining the study. Under REMAP-CAP, as a therapy ing, made early in 2020, was pivotal in the platform’s
sees positive results a higher proportion of partici- rapid expansion and global impact – especially during
pants receive that treatment, and fewer participants the pandemic’s critical early phases, before vaccines
are randomised to those treatments that are per- were available and when so many people were dying
forming poorly. from COVID-19 infection.
By mid-2020, REMAP-CAP was joined by other
large clinical trials looking at COVID-19 therapies
“We had become a factory for generating
and treatments. The UK’s Randomised Evaluation
results and, as soon as we had a result that was of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) trial was ward-
statistically significant, we would publish, based and instrumental in finding cheap and effec-
tive COVID-19 treatments, though its funding ran
which was always the aim of the project.” out in October this year. In March 2020, the WHO
undertook Solidarity, a large, simple, international,
REMAP-CAP global project manager Cameron open-label, randomised trial in patients hospitalised
Green joined the team in 2019, shortly before the with COVID-19, looking at the efficacy of drugs like
COVID-19 pandemic, because he was impressed Remdesivir. In the US, the National Institutes of
with the novel design of REMAP-CAP and its Bayes- Health conducted, and continues to conduct, trials
ian model, “which ensured that any patient enrolled for the treatment of COVID-19.
in a trial would have the benefit of the evidence that According to Steve Webb, only the RECOVERY
had already been accrued, when in normal trials trial – with its platform also evaluating multiple treat-
that’s not the case”, he says. ments – was similar to REMAP-CAP, but it focused
The inclusion criteria for any of the REMAP- on patients in hospital wards, while REMAP-CAP
CAP trials aimed to be both broad and blunt: an adult studied the very ill in ICUs.
admitted to ICU because of the pandemic disease “The two trials worked in tandem to give us a
and requiring some form of organ support. Success hugely important overview into what treatments
was a simple measure: the reduction in deaths during work for all patients sick enough with COVID that
the hospital admission and, in survivors, a reduction they were hospitalised,” he says.
in the number of days receiving life-sustaining treat- By the end of the COVID-19 pandemic’s chaotic
ments in an ICU. first year, a writing team within REMAP-CAP start-
With more than 150 UK hospitals on board with ed to publish. In preparation for the massive amounts
another 70 hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, of meaningful information that needed to be relayed
more ICU sites joined across Europe and Canada, to clinicians, the team had developed a template that
and in late 2020, Pakistan, India and Nepal. Later could be completed quickly, with data, methods and
participants included Japan, Singapore, South discussions and rapidly sent off to major journals
Africa and Malaysia. But only a few hospitals in the like the Journal of the American Medical Association
US joined REMAP-CAP – constrained by the very (JAMA) and NEJM.
REMAP-CAP
ing to study community-acquired pneumonia. pandemic. We have to always be ready to go, we have to
According to Webb, the REMAP-CAP program be able to pull the rip cord on these trials immediately.”
is heading back to “sleeping mode” – but with a Whatever comes next, “REMAP-CAP is ready”.
caveat. Over the past 300 years there has been an
influenza pandemic on average every 23 years; swine TANIA EWING is based in Melbourne. This is her first
flu in 2009 was the most recent one. story for Cosmos.
cosmosmagazine.com 55
Star struck
56 COSMOS MAGAZINE
GALLERY
cosmosmagazine.com 57
Moon: big mosaic (above): Andrea Vanoni’s painstakingly detailed 32-panel
composite image of the crescent Moon is a reminder of our natural satellite’s
proximity to, and intimacy with, Earth. Shot from Lombardy, Italy, in January
2021, the image illuminates the most famous craters, rims, mountains, domes and
seas of this lunar phase. Runner Up – Our Moon
A year in the Sun (above): Soumyadeep Mukherjee captured a
frame of the Sun nearly every day between 25 December 2020
and 31 December 2021 (he missed just six days). Then he blended
the images, taken from Kolkata, in West Bengal, India, to create
a single shot, in which sunspots form two orderly bands on the
solar disc, around 15°–35° north and south of the solar equator
and gradually start drifting towards it. The image illustrates a
phenomenon known as Spörer’s law, which predicts the variation
of sunspot latitudes during a solar cycle. Winner – Our Sun
58 COSMOS MAGAZINE
GALLERY
cosmosmagazine.com 59
The International Space Station transiting Tranquility Base
(above): On 19 January 2022, the International Space Station
(ISS) was perfectly aligned between Andrew McCarthy’s
telescope camera in Florence, Arizona, USA, and the Apollo 11
1969 landing site on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility. McCarthy
needed to be precisely positioned to capture the milliseconds-
long moment at the perfect time. Winner – People & Space
60 COSMOS MAGAZINE
GALLERY
cosmosmagazine.com 61
Winged aurora: Alexander
Stepanenko captured this
‘winged aurora’ crowning
a mountain in Russia’s
Murmansk Oblast (federal
division) on 15 January
2022. Murmansk lies at
Russia’s northwesternmost
extreme, and is part of the
Sápmi (Lapland) region
that stretches west across
Finland, Sweden and Norway.
Highly Commended – Aurorae
62 COSMOS MAGAZINE
GALLERY
cosmosmagazine.com 63
After diving from
a speeding dinghy,
scientist Scott Whiting
firmly restrains a young
green turtle. The animal’s
physical details will be
recorded before it’s
released into the waters
CREDIT
cosmosmagazine.com 65
WESSEL ISLANDS
66 COSMOS MAGAZINE
Marchinbar Island
Elcho Island
East
Arnhem
WESSEL ISLANDS
cosmosmagazine.com 67
great grandparents have traditionally managed and
woven stories around.
“Having worked with ranger groups across the
NT and the Kimberley for many years I know their
information about plants, animals, weather and hot-
spot areas on the land and sea is so crucial to our un-
derstanding of northern Australia,” she says.
“It’s important to acknowledge that and to
record it and make it publicly available. Important
because most Australians don’t realise how expan-
sive and precise their generational knowledge is and “Working with Carol I am learning so much more
it will definitely help us manage Australia’s amazing about turtles, dolphins and other marine animals.
marine megafauna.” Collaboration with scientists helps me out and it
Aboriginal people, too, are keen to exchange helps our people when we go to meetings [with gov-
knowledge. ernment decision-makers]; we know exactly what we
“We are noticing the numbers [of many species] are talking about and are aware of many of the things
are dropping because we are out there all the time,” that they try to tell us. As Indigenous people, where
says Wauchope, who works in the South Alligator we lack a little bit of scientific knowledge in those
region of Kakadu. finer things such as life cycle and genetics, we do
“If we are not at sea while we are at work, then we know a lot about these animals from daily experience
are out at sea after work, or on holidays. When some- and what has been handed down by our ancestors.
one asks us [about our local environment] we know “There are a few things I have found very useful,
what we are talking about. for example we learn about sea grass and habitat and
68 COSMOS MAGAZINE
WESSEL ISLANDS
realise it’s a wider thing, not just about the turtle. We unusual to see their tracks circling nesting sites. The
walk around back home on the sand and Carol is tell- islands follow the Top End wet/dry climatic seasons
ing us about the grasses and things, so we see what and, early in the year, waterfalls cascade over the
she is talking about. Yeah … science and traditional cliffs from monsoonal rain.
knowledge – it’s like a missing puzzle.” If the sea is smooth and undisturbed it takes about
three hours to travel from Galiwin’ku to Hopeful Bay
Knowledge shared – and multiplied on the western side and southern end of Marchinbar
The Wessel Archipelago is a narrow strip of islands Island by open boat. If a swell from the north is run-
extending north-east of Galiwin’ku community on ning it can be a laborious, drenching, hull-slapping
Elcho Island, for about 120 kilometres. The most journey that takes up to five hours. Not only are the
northerly point is Cape Wessel, which houses a beacon Wessels a hotspot for nesting green, hawksbill and
to help sailors who ply the route from Gove to Darwin. flatback turtles, but Marchinbar Island is home to
The islands are low and sandy, with mangroves and rare terrestrial species such as the golden bandicoot
heathland and have outflows of springwater. More (Isoodon auratus) and northern quoll (Dasyurus hal-
than 55km long and around eight kilometres wide, lucatus). Unlike the mainland, there are no feral ani-
Marchinbar is the largest island in the group. mals or plants on the Wessels, making the archipela-
On the western – or leeward – side, the beach- go an ideal environment for scientific research.
es are long, flat stretches of pure white sand; coral The islands are currently uninhabited, but they
is common and sea creatures abound. On the wind- were home to Yolngu Aboriginal people for thou-
ward, or eastern, side, sheer cliffs rise up to 60 metres sands of years. The islands were mapped and named
from the sea; between some of the cliffs are small se- by Dutch seafarers in the 1600s and frequented by
cluded bays that attract nesting turtles. The islands Macassan traders, who collected trepang from the
are also home to saltwater crocodiles and it is not shallows of sandy beaches and coral reefs.
cosmosmagazine.com 69
WESSEL ISLANDS
70 COSMOS MAGAZINE
cosmosmagazine.com 71
WESSEL ISLANDS
An ocean of waste
As pristine as it is, the Wessel Archipelago faces
major problems, foremost among them marine
debris.
“I started work on Marchinbar with golden ban-
dicoots in the 1990s and worked through to 2011,”
Palmer says. “There was virtually no plastics or ghost
nets during that time. In 2016 we went back to check
the bandicoots and we noticed the amount of ghost
nets and plastics had increased substantially. In 2021
it had increased even more substantially. I had never
seen so many plastics and ghost nets across the NT.”
Dr Scott Whiting, Principal Research Scientist,
Marine Science, with the Western Australia Depart-
ment of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions,
accompanied Palmer to the Wessels this year. He
says the incidence of marine debris from the west-
ern side of the Gulf of Carpentaria all the way to
Cobourg Peninsular probably ranks as some of the
world’s worst.
There are turtle nesting beaches littered with
plastics and the remains of fishing nets. At sea, dis-
carded nylon nets tangle to form their own eco-
systems that float and follow currents; they trap,
injure and kill all kinds of marine animals. These
ghost nets can reach down for metres and trail for
hundreds of metres, and can entangle marine crea- as much a foreign affairs issue as a conservation issue
tures for years. because it’s ubiquitous around the world. It just can’t
The Plastic Soup Foundation, an international Carol Palmer (top) has an be solved easily and it will take many decades to
body dedicated to raising awareness and fighting eye out for a variety of reduce the pressure.”
plastics pollution at sea, claims hundreds of millions marine animals as the group Much of the debris in Australian waters and on
of marine animals annually are killed or injured by of scientists and rangers our beaches comes from neighbours to the north;
ghost nets. patrol the coastline. To most of it is swept into the Gulf of Carpentaria,
“Marine debris is fairly invisible to us until it emphasise its mass (above), across the Top End and out into the Indian Ocean.
washes ashore,” Whiting says. “It affects turtles Gumurr Marthakal ranger It deeply concerns traditional owners, because their
when they are very small when we don’t see them – Marcus Lacey stands atop ability to manage the problem has gone beyond the
so it is not the turtles here in the shallows that are af- a ghost net that has drifted scope of many communities. Even though coastal
fected by marine debris. It is the turtles being killed onto coral at Marchinbar ranger groups regularly collect plastic debris along
out there at sea. We probably don’t know what we are Island. The extensive Yolngu beaches, most ghost nets are too heavy to deal with
missing, because they don’t end up arriving. knowledge of traditional – it’s been suggested the Royal Australian Navy use
“We do see all the life stages of species caught in owners (above right) David their vessels to tow the nets ashore to be destroyed.
marine debris, in the nets, because they are foraging Ganambarr, at left, and Marine debris might be the current issue that’s
on the surface of the ocean and those nets provide a James Djamu, right, help challenging their capacity, but Indigenous ranger
micro habitat. Because they are searching for food on scientists better understand groups play a major role in marine management
CREDIT
the surface, they will eat all the bits of plastic floating the region and local right across northern Australia, from Cape York to
along. That is a really big issue and a problem that is marine life. Broome.
72 COSMOS MAGAZINE
across Australia that is done by people who want to
be here and have ownership in the area and are going
to be here for generations.”
Alliances between scientists, traditional owners
and Indigenous rangers are only going to strengthen
over time. “Hopefully this research program will be
able to develop a proper on-ground working pro-
gram for all the sea ranger groups in their traditional
sea country,” Palmer says.
“Overall, it has to be the most positive movement “It will probably be different in many cases and will
I have seen for Indigenous social outcomes in terms not be like having one policy that will cover everything
of education, health, youth justice and conservation,” … that will not work. The more remote things are, the
Whiting says. “Here is a pathway where kids can see more difficult and expensive management becomes;
where they could end up, and their role models are to have one year’s funding will not work.
probably one of the biggest benefits I have seen. “What we need is long-term funding for manage-
“I think putting funds into them now is a mi- ment of marine megafauna and to help step rangers,
niscule amount than if government had to do it in traditional owners and kids through the process.”
another way. Many communities struggle to find an
CREDIT
industry to support themselves but I think we have DAVID HANCOCK is a writer and photographer based
already got the industry – land and sea management in Darwin. This is his first story for Cosmos.
cosmosmagazine.com 73
74 COSMOS MAGAZINE
PLANTS IN SPACE
C R A V E D I N
M
an cannot live on bread alone. Nor woman National University Associate Professor Caitlin Byrt.
chocolate. But nobody can survive without “We need to be able to grow things both in space and
bacon. And that’s a problem for life in space. in facilities on the lunar and Mars surfaces. The know-
A crisp crunch. A fresh tang. The bite of how for that doesn’t exist yet.”
spice. These are the things astronauts aboard the Put simply: we can’t meet the nutritional needs
International Space Station (ISS) quickly come to of a long-duration space mission – let alone service
crave. the emotional associations with food – with just tins,
Sustenance, it turns out, isn’t enough for survival. vacuum packs and protein paste.
LEFT: GREG BARTON / MIDJOURNEY. DUCKWEEDS: IAIN SARJEANT / GETTY IMAGES
Little wonder the most-commonly requested Livestock is out of the question. And our crops,
delivery item in space is a crisp, crunchy apple. Or a like the humans that tend them, didn’t evolve to live
zingy sausage. in zero gravity.
“Eating is a whole sensory experience,” says In November, the Australian Research Council
Associate Professor Jenny Mortimer, from the (ARC) granted $35 million over seven years to
University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food establish a new Centre for Excellence in Plants for
and Wine. “It’s about flavours and textures, smells Space (P4S). Including money from other partners,
and temperatures.” It’s also inherently social. this brings the total investment in P4S to $90 million.
“Meals are something that brings people Eventually, some 400 researchers across Australia
together,” Mortimer says. “Astronauts have been will strive to give potential space-faring plants “the
known to take plants out of their research containers right stuff”.
and fasten them to the tables where they sit together – Mortimer already has a contender.
there’s a real cultural and ritual thing going on there.” It can cope with the cold. It dismisses drought.
Plants will help you breathe. They will keep you sane. And when the going’s good, it grows very fast.
But, mostly, they will feed you. That’s why the descendants of a weed growing in
“We talk about people going to Mars but we’ve got an ornamental pond at Adelaide University’s Waite
a lot of work to do before we get there,” says Australian Research Institute could end up on Mars.
cosmosmagazine.com 75
Space for life
Astronaut Scott Kelly fell ill in orbit aboard the ISS.
His body was struggling to adapt. It turned out flowers
were the best medicine.
“They sent zinnia flowers to the space station for
no other reason than they were pretty,” says Mortimer.
“[Kelly] got massively invested in the survival of these
flowers. He used to wipe them down each day to try
and decontaminate them. Just the psychological thing
of having this beautiful flower to take care of made his
trip for him.”
Then there’s the phenomenon of menu fatigue.
We all know the feeling. We can get tired of even a
favourite food after having too much of it too often.
Astronauts are prime candidates for menu fatigue.
They eat everything they’re given. And they’re given
meals carefully designed to provide everything they
need. But they still end up losing weight.
“It’s all just a bit ‘brown’,” says Mortimer. “They
just love having something fresh. They had a chilli-
growing challenge recently and they all ate space
tacos. And they talk about it as being the best food
they’ve ever eaten.”
So, for future space travel, plants can supplement explains. “You’ve got to calculate very carefully how
raw nutrition with the vital spice of life. much plant takes up how much space to produce how
“But upon arrival at the Moon or Mars, we would many calories per person, because you can’t afford to
need to get to the point of meeting calorie demand,” run out.”
Mortimer adds. That makes strawberries prime contenders. And
That needs industrial-scale production. And carrots.
industrial-strength plants. “Everyone likes them,” Mortimer explains. “Not
only are they nutritious, they’re also delicious and
The right stuff colourful.” They’re also very efficient: You can eat
It costs a ballpark $2400 to put one kilogram of the leaves. And that meets the “zero waste” mantra
anything into low-Earth orbit. That blows out to dominating every aspect of life in space.
about $470,000 for the Moon. And getting it onto the So astrobiologists are seeking the perfect
lunar surface is an estimated $1.9 million. ‘template’ plant. One that meets most of the criteria
That’s why doing more with less is a matter of life for life in space, but that can also be adapted to provide
or death. the rest.
Plants can’t afford to be passengers. They must be “I’m biased in that I have a favourite plant
continually productive. They must be compact. (This already,” Mortimer says. “It’s called duckweed. It’s
won’t mean the return of the square watermelon.) fantastic, because it’s basically flat, and you can eat the SHIP PORTAL: GUILLAUME / GETTY IMAGES. ABOVE: ESA / ALEXANDER GERST
76 COSMOS MAGAZINE
PLANTS IN SPACE
“My colleague in the US has grown it in bacon It’s not easy being green: “You could hypothetically engineer a plant that
flavour,” she quips. Early plants in the ISS’s could switch from one kind of oil to another – such as
Mmmm. The Homer Simpson dream: onboard Vegetable vegetable fats to Omega 3,” Byrt adds.
unexplained bacon. Production System – aka “With aspirin, for example, it is a chemical that
Veggie – experiment were comes from willow bark. So I can’t see why you
Multi-functional flora subject to instruction couldn’t engineer new plants and reprogram their
“We’re going to take a couple of suitable plant manuals. When the zinnia existing biochemical pathways to produce related
species and try and use them to cover as many of our (above right) started wilting, chemical products.” Ultimately, the idea is to give
requirements as possible,” says Mortimer. astronaut Scott Kelly pointed plants useful “genetic circuits”: the ability to switch
What would such a plant look like? For openers, out: “I think if we’re going to the production of different compounds on or off
it’s a matter of identifying what properties are Mars, and we were growing according to demand.
necessary, and, further, determining if these already stuff, we would be responsible “The ISS is only 400 kilometres away, and it’s hard
exist in nature. for deciding when the stuff enough to treat those astronauts,” says Mortimer. The
Then researchers need to work out if these can be needed water. Kind of like Moon is 384,400km distant. Mars is 100 million km.
bred or designed into just one resilient plant. in my backyard, I look at it “So you’re not going to be able to take a pharmacy
“Duckweed is what I call a chassis for engineering,” and say ‘Oh, maybe I should with you, or keep it fully stocked,” she says. People
says Mortimer. “It’s the starting point. Now we just water the grass today’.” Kelly are also going to be in short supply. And time for
have to figure out what we can add into that.” paved the way for more maintenance will be scarce.
Students are working on ways to make it produce autonomous gardening on “We’re going to need automation. So, to what
ABOVE: NAOMI JELLICOE PHOTOGRAPHY / NEWSPIX. RIGHT: NASA
vitamin D and improve its vitamin A output. One is the craft, such as (opposite extent can we roboticise everything?”
looking at growing bioplastic construction materials. top right) astronaut Serena And how much can you squeeze out of every plant?
Others are trying to get the plant to synthesise Auñón-Chancellor’s harvest of “We’ve basically got to track every molecule of
pharmaceutical compounds such as aspirin. red Russian kale and dragoon carbon, every molecule of water, make sure we know
Byrt, a biological engineer, says it’s highly likely lettuce in 2018, which the where it’s going, where it’s coming back,” Byrt adds.
plants can become multipurpose factories – up to a crew enjoyed with balsamic “The same for every molecule of nitrogen. It focuses
point. vinegar. Associate Professor your mind on how many resources you are really using
“With duckweed, it’s handy you’re dealing with Jenny Mortimer (above – how much energy you’re using.” It’s the ultimate
something that’s already edible,” she says. left) thinks that the humble expression of a circular economy.
“There is a range of plant features you may want duckweed she’s displaying In space, it’s a matter of life and death, Mortimer
to take advantage of on space missions. Having a could provide a plentiful and says, “but it relates back to our agricultural problems
diversity of plants will be an advantage.” Some plants tasty protein source for our on Earth as well: climate change is happening at an
have evolved to optimise the production of starch or first space colonists. alarming rate. And conventional ways of doing things
sugars. Others do oils or fibres. can’t keep up.”
cosmosmagazine.com 77
Germinating knowledge As associate Professor Caitlyn But plant-informed technology is already solving
We’ve already learnt a lot from two decades of near- Byrt (above left) points out, these problems in space.
permanent life in orbit. “One is that plants are pretty plants are “multipurpose Water recycling filters aboard the ISS used to get
resilient, and things we’d expect to be a problem are factories”, providing air clogged and degrade. Astronauts got sick from the
not,” says Mortimer. “But also that all species don’t filtering and textiles in contaminants that slipped past.
behave the same way.” addition to nutrition. Also “You could say we’re a bit obsessed about a type
How would plants cope not knowing which way morale, as Expedition 65 of membrane protein called aquaporins,” says Byrt.
was up? Would they, in the absence of gravity, become flight engineers (above, from “They’re in all different kingdoms of life. They have a
a tangled ball of roots, leaves and branches? left) Mark Vande Hei, Shane range of different purposes.”
“It turns out if you provide light from above, most Kimbrough, Akihiko Hoshide In trees, they help to draw moisture through the
plants go – okay, there’s no gravity, but I can still grow and Megan McArthur, show. root system and into up to 100 metres of trunk and
towards the light,” says Mortimer. “It’s not true for They’re posing in 2021 with branches – all the while distributing specific nutrients
all. But it is for most.” the first chilli peppers grown where needed. In human kidneys, they help sift up to
Astronauts are pretty much the busiest humans in space as part of the Plant 200 litres of blood each day to keep water and mineral
on or off the planet. Researchers only get to book a Habitat-04 investigation levels optimal.
fraction of their time. And only one of them has been – and served in “the best A Danish company – Aquaporin A/S – has
a plant molecular biologist: that’s put a limit on the space tacos yet”. This year, now successfully coopted the billions of years of
complexity of orbital plant experiments. Expedition 67 astronauts evolutionary improvement that went into aquaporins
“Although we’ve made a lot of progress, it’s (opposite top left) Jessica and translated it into new filtering membranes capable
still comparatively limited,” says Mortimer. “And Watkins and Bob Hines of extracting pure water from urine.
honestly, a lot of the work up until now has been about explored soilless methods
more the technology infrastructure than the plants of growing plants as part No triffids today
themselves.” of the XROOTS project. Soil, and the rich microbial life within it, turns out not
FROM LEFT: UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE. NASA X 2
Those infrastructure problems are not to be a universal necessity. Some plants can do quite
insignificant. How do you control how water moves in well without it. Others only need an alternative.
microgravity? Its behaviour is weird: it’s globby and “Plants that need a microbiome get something
sticky. It tends to clump around plant roots – and that out of it they couldn’t get otherwise, like nitrogen or
convinces the plants they’re drowning. phosphates,” says Mortimer. “But if we’re already
Another issue: how do you balance the plants’ providing all that to them, then – in theory – we can
atmosphere? They don’t like too much carbon dioxide grow all these plants in sterile aseptic conditions.”
(nor do humans). And CO2 levels on the ISS are four But space isn’t a sterile environment.
times higher than what would normally make a person One only needs to look at the filmy layer of
drowsy. microbial slime that coats just about everything
PLANTS IN SPACE
Branching out
Water is heavy. Soil is heavy. Both are terribly messy,
even when not in zero gravity.
That’s where science fiction falls down. There
won’t be giant glass domes spanning vast, green open
spaces under the light of 100 billion stars.
Fortunately, hydroponics and aeroponics appear
to work well in orbit. That means stacked industrial
racks of self-contained arboretum shelves are viable.
Each drawer will be a closed, controlled
environment. A tiny fraction of the water you would
normally use can be delivered directly to the roots.
And this can be primed with whatever nutrients a
particular plant needs at any particular time.
“That’s why some of the Australian companies
that work in this closed environment, agricultural
space are interested in collaborating on space
projects,” says Mortimer. “They can see the very close
links between efficiency in space and the effectiveness
of vertical farming on Earth.”
Early calculations suggest a 2m square by 2.5m
Hear more about high cabinet of tightly packed duckweed could sustain
space food on The a single person with a full-protein diet.
Science Briefing At first, it may only produce a protein shake.
Ultimately, it may simulate meats and cheeses – and
manufacture the thread needed to mend a torn shirt.
But much more research is needed. Every aspect
needs to be measured and tested, every challenge
understood. “At first you do as little as you can get
away with so that people can survive,” says Mortimer.
RIGHT: DEAGOSTINI / GETTY IMAGES
cosmosmagazine.com 79
Wizards of Oz
80 COSMOS MAGAZINE
OLIPHANT & FLOREY
A
t the outbreak of war, there were Unburdened by the furrows of previous practice
a few known ways to generate and theoretical clutter, Randall and Boot asked
microwaves but none suitable themselves instead if the best features of both the
for battle-ready radar. The most klystron and the magnetron might be combined to
promising was the ‘klystron’ produce a superior next-generation device.
invented in 1937 by American brothers Russell and Randall recalled rummaging through a second-
Sigurd Varian at Stanford University and improved hand bookstore on his recent summer holidays with
by Oliphant. The klystron was essentially a vacuum his family in the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth.
tube with a cathode at one end, from which an
electron beam was shot to amplify a high-frequency
radio signal passing through the tube. “Fortunately we did not have the time
Another method for generating microwaves was
the magnetron. The first simple prototype was built in
to survey all the published papers on
1920 in the United States and subsequently replicated
independently over the next two decades in several
magnetrons or we would have become
other countries. This device also consisted of a glass completely confused by the multiplicity
vacuum tube. The tube was surrounded by a magnetic
field, which caused the electrons shot from a cathode of theories of operation.”
to follow curved – as opposed to straight – paths along
the tube. The magnetron could produce microwaves There he came across a copy of HM Macdonald’s
of a centimetre in length at 30 or 40 watts, just about seminal 1902 book Electrical Waves. Not typical
enough to power a weak light bulb. Only a tenth as summer holiday reading perhaps, but it sparked
strong as Oliphant’s klystron, it seemed unlikely ever Randall’s imagination. In the book, Macdonald
to power workable radar. detailed the great German physicist Heinrich Hertz
This was the device passed to two members of and his famous electric ‘spark-gap experiment’. Hertz
Oliphant’s team: the unimpressed Randall and Boot. was the first to produce high-frequency radio waves
JohnRandallwas34,withacreativemindanddiscipline and then, as they oscillated through a loop of copper
for hard work. He was inspired by the Adelaide-born wire, detect them in the form of a spark jumping a
BETTMAN/GETTY IMAGES
Nobel laureate Lawrence Bragg to train as a physicist minute gap in the loop.
(the world of science still being relatively small, While Hertz’s observation inspired the first radio
their paths would cross again after the war, when transmitters, the wire technology only generated
Randall’s team at King’s College collaborated with short pulses of radio waves, which restricted it
James Watson and Francis Crick from the Cavendish largely to sending Morse Code. The technology was
cosmosmagazine.com 81
superseded in the early To expand Birmingham
1920s by vacuum tube University’s expertise in
transmitters able to physics, Mark Oliphant (right,
produce the continuous pointing to colleagues)
waves used to carry planned to install a 60-inch
sound in contemporary cyclotron there by the end
radios. But Randall was of 1939. But World War II
nevertheless intrigued. intervened, and the machine
If high-frequency – shown here in 1945 – wasn’t
radio waves could be operating until 1948.
generated across a gap in
a wire, might it be possible to generate them in three
dimensions – in other words, across the gap inside a
metal cylinder?
Randall’s musty book also detailed a calculation
that caught his eye. Macdonald showed that the
length of radio waves produced would be 7.94 times
the diameter of Hertz’s loop. So, asked Randall, would
that also apply to the diameter of a metal cylinder?
He and Boot decided to find out. To achieve
Oliphant’s target of a transmitter that would produce
10-centimetre wavelengths (thought to be optimal for
radar) they rounded up Macdonald’s figure to 8 and
calculated that the diameter of the tube would have to
be about 1.2 centimetres.
The next step was pure genius. One afternoon
in November 1939, the young men had an idea:
why only one 1.2-centimetre-wide tube – why not a
number of them, say six, placed around an electron
82 COSMOS MAGAZINE
OLIPHANT & FLOREY
fluorescent tubes. They too lit up the room – as well as receiving the Albert was finalising his first major funding proposal to
the spirits of Randall, Boot and Oliphant. Gold Medal in 1946) led pursue penicillin research. He had thrown his lot in
On 24 February, Boot confirmed with a scrawl teams that over a period with the mysterious mould and went all out to impress
in his black laboratory notebook that the radio of 100 days in early 1940 the Medical Research Council and its Secretary (and
wavelength produced by the resonant cavity developed the device that former colleague at the University of Sheffield) Sir
HUTLON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES EDIT
magnetron was 9.5 centimetres – almost exactly what was critical to winning the Edward Mellanby. Pending a full examination of his
the Royal Air Force needed for the next generation of war – microwave radar – proposal by the Council, Mellanby forwarded £25
portable, all-seeing microwave radar. Power output conceived the powerful “for expenses”. Under a separate grant, German-
was soon confirmed at an extraordinary 400 watts weapon that ended it – born Ernst Boris Chain was also awarded £300
– ten times better than any previous magnetron. the atomic bomb – and with £100 for expenses per annum for three years –
And while 400 watts appeared to be the ceiling for produced the miracle thus, if nothing else, providing him with security of
the klystron, for the cavity magnetron it was just the treatment that enabled employment.
beginning. countless casualties to So, with £25 and a dash of hope, a revolution in
The two young scientists always credited survive it – the first ever human healing began. It was a start, but it was nowhere
Oliphant’s “great drive” for the success of the entire antibiotic, penicillin. near enough. And Florey, like so many research
unlikely enterprise. It was, they reflected years later, They are the two most scientists before and since, grew sick of the endless
“fortunate ... that we were in Oliphant’s laboratory at consequential Australians rounds of funding applications and increasingly self-
the University of Birmingham”. of the war, and among the conscious of his emerging status as an “academic
Oliphant was project manager, mentor, fundraiser war’s most consequential highway robber”. But the powerful team he assembled
and problem solver. Not a natural diplomat, he scientists. could do little without the necessary equipment and
cosmosmagazine.com 83
materials.
Salvation came in the person of Harry M
‘Dusty’ Miller, one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s
representatives in Europe. On 1 November 1939,
the globe-trotting Miller was in Oxford, having lunch
with the university’s Vice Chancellor, Professor
George Gordon, and his family. For an American
with money, no doors were closed. Dusty Miller, an
early scout for an ascending America, embodied the
changing fortunes of Anglo-American relations.
After lunch, Miller dropped in to see Florey at
the Dunn School. He found the lab “quite full” with
evacuees from the Ministry of Health in London, but The two young scientists always
other than that, his timing could not have been better.
The straight-talking Florey mentioned to Miller, a credited Oliphant’s “great drive” for
trained bacteriologist, that he was “just on the point”
of asking the Rockefeller Foundation for a grant to
the success of the unlikely enterprise...
support research he was beginning on “naturally Oliphant was project manager, mentor,
produced bacteriological inhibitors”.
Miller’s ears pricked with interest. He respected fundraiser and problem solver.
Florey, noting in a memorandum sent a few days later
to the Rockefeller Foundation headquarters in New
York that the young Australian is “practically the only foundation a couple of weeks later, on 20 November.
experimental pathologist of any real distinction in the If approved, it would single-handedly take care of all
British Isles”. Miller added that Florey “has the full the money woes and save Florey from the distraction
confidence of Mellanby”. of constant fundraising. With so much riding on its
Miller’s initial enthusiasm paved the way success, Florey ended his application letter with a
for Florey and Chain’s formal application to the new, if characteristically understated, appreciation for
practical outcomes, something much favoured by the
business-like Americans: “It may also be pointed out
that the work proposed, in addition to its theoretical
importance, may have practical value for therapeutic
purposes”.
On 19 February – two days before Randall
and Boot successfully demonstrated their cavity
magnetron to Oliphant in Birmingham – Florey
and Chain learned that their application had been
successful. They received £1250 (or US$5000),
guaranteed for a year, but eventually extended to five.
task.
And frustrating. The problem of finding the
optimal growth medium was one thing, but a more
prosaic lack of laboratory space and suitable vessels
also restricted production and the quantities
remained small. On top of this, extracting penicillin
84 COSMOS MAGAZINE
OLIPHANT & FLOREY
impurities, and Chain, using another recently over the course of millennia, was now breaking into a
discovered technology – freeze-drying – was able sprint.
store the penicillin without sacrificing its potency.
After weeks of work, Chain held a test tube with a few This is an edited extract from: Wizards of Oz: How
pinches of a dusty brown powder – penicillin’s first Oliphant and Florey helped win the war and shape
face to the world. the modern world, by Brett Mason. Published by
Chain was keen to start testing penicillin on NewSouth books and available now (rrp: $34.99).
cosmosmagazine.com 85
Developer Ian MacLarty used
generative techniques he’d
honed on another game to
render the key art for his
upoming engineering puzzle
game called Mars First
Logistics. “I feel this approach
leads to a more naturalistic,
vaster and less “theme park”
feeling environment,” he says.
“I was interested in making
a game where the landscape
itself is an adversarial
character.”
LIFE ON MARS:
EXPLORING THE RED PLANET
I
’m hovering 10 metres above the surface of Mars,
86 COSMOS MAGAZINE
MARS GAMING
Melbourne video game developer Conor O’Kane, vehicle for science advocacy. By presenting people
allows players to use the small, solar-powered with a simulator that makes Mars seem real, he
helicopter to explore the neighbourhood of Jezero believes a new generation will be inspired to learn
Crater, landing site for the rover, Perseverance. more about science and planetary exploration.
With controller in hand, players steer the ruler- They’re grand aims to grow from what started as
length helicopter, nicknamed Ginny, over the planet’s a quirky hobby. Six years ago, O’Kane began home-
landscape, sometimes completing science missions, making sections of the Martian landscape. Starting
including taking photographs of selected sites. with digital terrain data from the High Resolution
Experiencing Mars in virtual reality eclipses two- Imaging Science Experiment – HiRISE – he used
MARS FIRST LOGISTICS KEY ART/IAN MACLARTY/SHAPE SHOP
dimensional video or photos, says O’Kane. Immersed a home 3D printer to replicate slices of Martian
in 3D, players can better appreciate the planet’s landscape in 1:20,000 scale before painting them in
topology, gaining a sense of distance and scale. “You colourful acrylics.
can see, oh, we’re going to land here,” O’Kane says. “So I had been getting into this … then I thought
“And it’s only a couple of hundred metres to the hills. I could take the landing site for this new mission,
You can see how high the hills are. Perseverance … and fly around it in VR before the
“My hope is that people will start to think, ‘why helicopter even gets there.”
are there hills like this on Mars?’ And then they’ll Professionally, O’Kane has worked as a video
read a bit about it. And they’ll learn, actually these games developer and technical artist for more
hills are not just hills, they’re a river delta deposited than two decades. Relying on his knowledge of
by a river flowing for millions of years.” programming and 3D printing, he imported the
Video games might seem an escapist distraction, Mars terrain data into the Unity video game engine
but O’Kane thinks they have huge potential as a and began to bring it to life in virtual reality.
cosmosmagazine.com 87
Mars Flight VR includes missions in which the player has to
capture photographs of nearby rocks in a short time. This
tests the player’s ability to fly quickly, and also to perform
a stable hover to capture the image from the correct
angle. Mars Flight VR started out as a quirky pastime
for developer Conor O’Kane (below). Using image files
(opposite right) sourced from the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter’s HiRISE camera, he’d make and colour 3D printed
models (opposite left) of Martian landscapes.
provided feedback on details like the atmospheric we think, driven by carbon dioxide processes, its
density on Mars, and the properties of the helicopter. phase change … How it occurs and travels from one
“Of course, the real helicopter flies itself, you side of the planet to the other, and accumulates in
don’t directly control it, you just give it a destination these darker, colder local regions.”
and it flies. But that’s no fun in video games,” O’Kane Yet, far from being exclusive or out-of-reach,
says. “So, I tried to make it feel as much like flying on HiRISE is “the people’s camera”.
Mars as I can while still being accessible.” LPL’s commitment to public outreach sees Mars
images and data released on a monthly basis; much
LPL: OPEN ACCESS LAB faster than other NASA programs.
Known for its deserts and canyons, the US state of “We release new data as soon as we can get it
Arizona is home to a research lab which has been calibrated and processed,” says Dr Sarah Sutton,
88 COSMOS MAGAZINE
MARS GAMING
a photogrammetry and image processing scientist 3D printing, and actively encourages creative
with the HiRISE Operations Center. exploration of its data and images, by artists,
“We’re always thrilled when the public engages designers … and video games developers.
with the data.” It’s a way of reimagining real Mars, evoking an
Engagement is so intrinsic to LPL’s approach outer space sensory experience rendered through
that members of the public can even nominate virtual colour, texture, depth and sound.
locations on Mars to be photographed, using a tool
called HiWISH. ROVERS IN REAL LIFE
“It’s easy, and it’s fun,” says Sutton. “And it’s Rover planning on the Red Planet can seem a bit
very exciting when your target gets acquired.” like a video game sometimes, says NASA program
While there’s no guarantees a publicly requested scientist Dr Mitch Schulte.
site will be captured, many are. In fact, Sutton says Schulte is based in Washington, DC and oversees
it was a request through HiWISH that confirmed the science goals of Mars missions – like those
the final landing site of UK’s Beagle 2 Mars Lander, involving Perseverance and Ingenuity. His role
which was due to land on 25 December 2003, but includes assessing research proposals to access NASA’s
declared lost after an extensive search. vast public archive, called the planetary data system.
“It did actually land,” she says. “It was thought A rover like Perseverance can’t be controlled
that it crashed. But they found it because they could in real time, he says. Mars is simply too far away, so
actually see it in our images, and nobody had looked. everything needs to be planned in advance.
“From the analysis of our HiRISE images, That’s why, Schulte says, “coding is everything”.
they were able to determine then that the Beagle “The amount of debugging that goes into the
had landed and that some of its panels had software ahead of time is enormous, because we can’t
LEFT: CONOR O’KANE. RIGHT: HIRISE
opened, but not fully. And so, it was never able to afford any mistakes. And now when we want to tell the
communicate back.” LPL’s website, called ‘Made rover even just to drive 20 metres over to that rock,
with HiRISE’ showcases the broad range of artistic that is pre-programmed. That command is sent from
and technological interpretations of Mars data and Earth, directly to the rover, to its antenna. And then
images; everything from visual arts, to music, school it performs those functions based on the software and
projects, animations, apps and augmented reality. the rover computing elements that are onboard.”
LPL has even produced tools allowing its More recently they’ve added an ‘auto navigation’
digital terrain models to be exported for uses like capability. It’s programming that enables the rover
cosmosmagazine.com 89
IT’S THE KIND OF MAKE- to question, ‘Oh, what’s it like outside on Mars?’, he
says. “And then of course, that leads them to us.”
we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. What they’re logistics support for the construction of a Mars colony
getting out of it, what the scientific community gets (a goal private company SpaceX aims to achieve by
out of it,” he says. 2050). It’s Mars, Jim, but not as we know it.
Schulte believes that sparking an interest in the “I wanted to make it so it feels like you’re playing
science of Mars – even tangentially through a video with Lego, like you’re playing with a toy,” says
game – is definitely worth it. He sees an interplay developer Ian MacLarty, who created the game with
between exploring Mars through a medium like art his team at Shape Shop. “But it’s still trying to bring
or video games, and growing awareness about the out that engineering kind of ingenuity.”
science, technology and engineering aspects of the Pieces can be deployed flexibly in interesting and
actual missions. surprising ways, both mechanically and aesthetically.
Playing a game set on Mars might lead people “So for example, I’ve got a thing called the hydraulic
MARS GAMING
cylinder, which gives you linear motion,” MacLarty to NASA. O’Kane’s simulator has been downloaded
says. “And then I’ve got a servo, which gives you more than 10,000 times.
rotational motion. And just those two things Now the Martian landscape is taking on new,
combined, you can do so much.” human, dimensions.
The game manages to bring a touch of the everyday “I’ve been flying around this for a couple of years,
to the far, far away. While some delivery missions getting to know the area, getting to know the hills.
might involve construction materials – a steel beam And as the rover team drive to different locations,
or a telescope mirror – for building a greenhouse or they name it,” he says. “There’s this particular
an observatory, in others, players find themselves outcrop, kind of a butte, or a hill. They’ve called it the
delivering lunch to the working astronauts. Kodiak outcrop. I used to fly around that.”
It’s the kind of make-believe that makes the Scientist, science-fiction author and space
possibility of Mars tangible, even domestic – the enthusiast, Arthur C Clarke wrote that “the
household to-do list of humans 2.0. astronomical artist will always be far ahead of the
explorer. They can depict scenes that no human
VIRTUAL REALITY GETS REAL eye will ever see, because of their danger, or their
After years in development, Mars Flight VR was remoteness in time and space”.
released for early access in June 2020 as a second Just as books, art and film brought the Moon
wave of the COVID-19 pandemic locked down landing to life long before 1969; today video games
O’Kane’s home in Melbourne, Victoria. A month and virtual reality offer the chance to play, fly and
later, NASA’s Perseverance rover was launched. deliver things on the Red Planet, decades before
O’Kane, who now works as a simulation engineer crewed missions take flight, but as space agencies
at space tech company Saber Astronautics, was glued explore the planet with cameras, rovers and drone-
to the mission – watching NASA’s livestream and copters, searching out signs of life and preparing for
updates by the Mars Guy (aka Mars geologist Dr the possibility of human exploration before 2050.
Steve Ruff ) on YouTube. When the rover landed on 18 One of Earth’s first Martian colonists could
February 2021, it came as a huge relief. be skittering and soaring Ingenuity above Jezero
“And then amazingly enough, the helicopter, Crater, right here, right now, in a bedroom not far
which they expected to fly for like six minutes and from you. Their virtual reality, not knowing that it’s
then break, is still going 18 months later.” becoming real.
The helicopter has clocked up more than 30
CREDIT
flights, covering more than 7.3 kilometres, taking PETRA STOCK is based in Melbourne. Last issue, she
hundreds of photos of the Martian surface, according interviewed David Popa for the gallery: Here today…
cosmosmagazine.com 91
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Sean Connery’s James
Bond – resting here
in a scene from 1964’s
Goldfinger – filled
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES / GETTY IMAGES
108
BOND: REEL TO REAL
007 is synonymous with style,
spectacle and spy-fi gadgets –
some of which have come true
96
ALL GOOG
Cracking the complex
chemistry that is the
remarkable egg
102
HERE COMES THE SUN
We love sunshine, but it doesn’t love
our skin. But what’s the science
behind sunscreen?
112
PUZZLES
Science-inspired
brain bogglers
114
PROFILE
Marine ecologist
Natalie Robson
cosmosmagazine.com 95
EGGSCELLENT
a nd de licious int
r y, ot
ist he
T h e y ’r e a n e v e r y d a y m che
m b a rg a i n .
i ra c l e o f
96 COSMOS MAGAZINE
ZEITGEIST
CHEMISTRY
A s N a t h a n K i l a h ex p l a i n s , t h e re
’s a l sid e the shell.
ot o k ed in
f science pac
MIRAGEC / GETTY IMAGES
cosmosmagazine.com 97
T
here are few foods as versatile as the permeate through thousands of surface connect the shell to the two membrane lay-
humble egg. These nutrient-filled pores. These pores run through vertically ers inside. The membrane is lifted off the
packages are excellent scrambled, aligned crystals that make up the shell at the air cell (or space), and you might
poached, or fried, and are essential in shell. The inner surface of these cal- be familiar with the “float test” as a marker
cakes, puddings, soufflé, quiche, ice cite crystals are covered in for the safety of an egg. The air cell gets larg-
creams, sauces, drinks, cosmetics, bumps that help to er as the egg dehydrates, so
vaccines and more. But what is it while this test will help
about the humble egg that makes it you tell a new egg
such an adaptable ingredient and from an older
scientifically useful object? egg, it doesn’t in-
dicate bacterial
Chicken or egg? spoilage. In fact,
First thing first: the egg definitely
came first. The emergence of amniote
eggs some 330 million years ago marked a
significant evolutionary development as
both the water and nutrients were available STURDY CAPSULE It takes a fair bit of force to break an egg
in the one package. This broadened the pos- 600
sible habitat of egg-laying creatures to var-
OSTRICH
ied terrestrial environments. Chickens are
500 GOOSE
relatively recent, evolving around 60,000
years ago and were only domesticated 3000 CHICKEN (JUMBO)
years ago. The complexity and efficiency of
BREAKING FORCE (KG)
FROM TOP: BRIAN A JACKSON / GETTY IMAGES. BAZIL PHOTO / GETTY IMAGES. GRAPH SOURCE: THE ROYAL SOCIETY X2
shaped by the inclusion of proteins and sug-
ars. The combination of inorganic crystals 0
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70
and organic proteins give incredible micro-
EGGSHELL RADIUS (MM)
structural and mechanical strength to pro-
tect the embryo from physical damage. Here, normal force at failure (breaking point) is shown as a function of eggshell radius. Each
The surface of the egg is covered with a circle is centred on the mean breaking force and the radius is proportional to the standard
very thin layer of proteins, which keep bacte- deviation for each given type of egg. The force increases with egg size.
ria outside the shell while allowing gases to
EMBRYONIC ENVELOPES It’s a simple equation: the bigger the bird, the bigger the egg
Ostrich
120
100
HEIGHT (mm)
80
Goose
60
Chicken (organic) Chicken (jumbo)
Chicken (pullet) Chicken (white)
40
Quail
20
0
Egg species in order of increasing height/volume: quail, pullet chicken, white-AA chicken, organic-AA chicken, jumbo chicken, goose and ostrich.
98 COSMOS MAGAZINE
EGGS ZEITGEIST
soaking eggs tends to destroy the thin pro- sitely complicated molecular origami but turing) when shaken or whipped, as the pro-
tective protein layer, making it easier for can rapidly change their properties if this teins trap air bubbles. These foams can be
bacteria to enter the shell – so if you do test folding is disrupted. This is certainly true stabilised in meringues, or function as a
an egg, cook it soon after. for ovalbumin, the major protein in the egg leavening agent in foods like biscuits, souf-
white, as it readily unfolds (known as dena- fles and cakes.
The white stuff The pH of the albumen is neutral (pH
The white of the egg (the albumen) is a solu- 7.6) at the time of laying, but rapidly rises
tion of proteins in water. Proteins are exqui- to alkaline (pH 9.7) in just a few days
through the release of carbon dioxide. This
change in pH of the albumen is thought to
WORTH THE WAIT? influence the ovomucin gel, resulting
Century eggs are a uniquely preserved egg, in a thinning of the white and weak-
originating in China. Fresh duck eggs are ening the adhesion of the
coated in a paste made of lime (calcium membrane to the shell. These
FROM TOP: SAKURRA / SHUTTERSTOCK. GALIYAH ASSAN / GETTY IMAGES
oxide), clay, salt, wood ash (a source of two properties make old
alkaline salts) and strong tea. The eggs are eggs harder to poach but
then left for up to 100 days, depending on much easier to peel
the alkaline concentration. The chemical when boiled.
treatment transforms the internal egg,
with the yolk becoming a grey/green Have your cake
colour, and the white becoming an and emulsify it
amber to brown gel. The change is too
due to the migration of hydroxide The proteins of the
ions through the shell and membrane, albumen are con-
which denatures and breaks down the nected to the yolk
proteins. The processed eggs have an through the chala-
impressive shelf life of months and are zae, twisted bungy-
described by their flavour advocates as cord-like structures.
creamy and similar to a strong blue cheese. This shock-absorbing
cosmosmagazine.com 99
scaffold helps keep the yolk centred within produced and then the egg enters the shell
the egg white, with a clockwise twist at the gland, where over about 20 hours the shell is
air cell end and a counter-clockwise twist at created and the pigments form on the final
the pointed end. layers, adding colour. Finally the egg ro-
The yolk starts its development early: tates, ready to be laid.
3000 small ova are already pres- Modern breeds of chicken that lay
ent in each fluffy female chick. multiple eggs in a week have many swelling
Once the hen reaches sexual ova at any one time. The yolk is made up of
maturity, each ovum under- fat molecules closely surrounded by
goes a 10-day development proteins to keep them
prior to being released into suspended in water.
the oviduct, where it is rap- “Designer” eggs fortified
idly covered in secretions with vitamins and
that form the egg white. omega-3 fatty acids
Shell membrane fibres are have been trialled, but
the transfer of these
nutraceuticals from feed
WHAT’S BEST: HOME LAID OR to yolk is variable and can
TOP LEFT: WESTEND61 / GETTY IMAGES. EDIBLE EGG PART COMPOSITIONS: ANSES-CIQUAL (FRENCH AGENCY FOR FOOD, ENVIRONMENTAL AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY)
COMMERCIAL? IT DEPENDS shorten an egg’s shelf life.
Although free range chickens generally One of the key culinary
lay more nutritious eggs than their caged roles of the yolk is to stabilise
counterparts, a recent study has highlighted emulsions. The yolk’s phospholipids
the potential risks of raising chickens and (sometimes referred to as lecithin) are key
eating eggs in urban environments. The to this property, as they are composed of
study examined the lead content of the long fatty chains that are excellent at inter-
urban soil, and the corresponding blood acting with other oily molecules, and
lead levels in chickens foraging on that positively and negatively charged groups
soil, and in their eggs. The lead levels that can interact strongly with water.
were up to 40 times higher in home
garden eggs than the commercial
free range equivalent, and at a level PIGMENT OF IMAGINATION
higher than the currently regulated Egg pigmentation varies widely across the
soil lead limits. Home chicken keepers: avian world. Chicken eggs in commercial
get your soil tested! production are normally white or brown.
White eggs highlight the underlying
colourless calcium carbonate of the shell,
while the brown colour comes from the
Carbohydrates Carbohydrates pigment protoporphyrin IX laid down on the
Crude 0.85% Fat 1.09% Fat
Crude surface of the egg. The brown pigment is the
protein 0.19% protein 26.71%
10.82% Ash 15.50%
same molecule that’s in the haem group of
0.42% haemoglobin in blood, but without the iron
that gives the bright red colour. It is only
added at the final step of the egg-laying
Ash
1.68% process, so the inside of a brown egg shell
remains white. A genetic mutation in certain
breeds of chicken from South America has
Water Water given rise to blue coloured eggs, where a
87.72% 55.02%
horseshoe shaped molecule called biliverdin
gives a lovely pale blue colour. Unlike the
(a) (b)
surface addition of protoporphyrin IX, the
blue pigment is added throughout the shell
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
process. Chicken breeders have mixed and
The basic components of an egg’s edible parts – the white (a) and yolk (b) – are
matched these coloured egg breeds to make
shown above. Water, protein and fat dominate. Note that yolk analysis includes
all sorts of colours from blue to green to
both the yolk and vitelline membrane that contains it.
brown, including trend colours like avocado
and kalamata.
ASTAXANTHIN
keep them separated and stable. Classic material: where two or more materials are
examples of yolk-based emulsions combined to give a material with enhanced
include mayonnaise – an emulsion of properties. You can test this by dissolving
ZE
CA
AX
oil and vinegar – and hollandaise the calcium carbonate with vinegar to
PS
A
sauce, where heated whipped yolk make a bouncy egg, or by roasting a
NT
AN
is used to stabilise an emulsion of blown egg shell to remove the proteins
H
TH
IN
butter. and make a brittle shell. Many modern
IN
Cakes also benefit from the materials make use of the properties
properties of these emulsions as YOLK COLOUR LYCOPENE of composites by taking a fibrous
the phospholipids hold onto CHEMISTRY material and surrounding it with a
ß-
water to maintain a tender and solid matrix, for example fibreglass,
CR
Y
LU
moist crumb. PT in which glass threads strengthen
ß-CAROTENE
TE
O
The glorious golden colour of plastic resins. Modern aviation requires
X
IN
AN
egg yolks (colour wheel, right) materials that are light, strong and stiff,
THI
cosmosmagazine.com 101
LD’S
WOR EST
H
TOUG EEN TEST
SCR
ralian
The Aust aking and
fm
regime o creens
g s un s
testin
ered and
is consid and given
–
stringent ates
ar
melanom ntirely
’s e
here that , writes
te
appropria DIAN.
HID
ELLEN P
E
very day, you step through your How on Earth is it of absorbing it. (For
front door and enter a deadly all made – and how do some reason, the fact
environment: the radiation out here we know it’s effective? that melanin absorbs
kills hundreds of people each year, and UV, and exists natu-
injures many more. HOW DOES rally, doesn’t seem to
It’s a good thing science has provided us SUNSCREEN WORK? rate in these arguments.)
with a protective medicine. It’s loaded with The aim of sunscreen is In reality, all these
one of the dozens of chemicals that have to shield your skin from substances do an equally
been shown, time and again, to absorb the ultraviolet (UV) light – good job of protecting your
radiation you’ll be exposed to. It’s mixed but not visible light (unless skin, and none of them are
into a bevy of special solvents, so that it you want to look like you’re better or worse for you. But,
adheres properly to your skin. A fragrance covered in paint). So all especially for those with sensi-
might have been added to negate the scent, sunscreens contain at least one chemical tive skin, it’s useful to know that we have a
or polymers to prevent water and sweat that either absorbs or reflects UV light. range of different chemicals that can do the
sloughing it off. These chemicals can be metal-based trick: if you’re allergic to one sunscreen
The medicine represents thousands of (things like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide) ingredient, there are dozens more to
hours of developing, testing, and redevel- or carbon-based (organic) molecules (such choose from.
oping by thousands of dedicated scientists as homosalate or octocrylene. Each of them Check the ingredient list on a bottle of
– and more than a few human volunteers interacts a little differently with light. sunscreen and you’ll see that ‘homosalate’
who have gotten burned to check it works. “Zinc and titanium do act like mirrors,” or ‘zinc oxide’ isn’t the only ingredient.
Yes – it’s sunscreen. says Dr Fabrizio Spada, Scientific Affairs There’ll be a bunch of other things in there,
It should be no surprise that Australia Manager at Ego Pharmaceuticals, which too, to keep the sunscreen stable, spread it
has some of the strictest regulations on makes SunSense sunscreen. evenly onto skin, and make it more pleasant
sunscreen. Along with New Zealand, we Zinc and titanium sit on top of the skin, to wear. Which brings us to…
have the highest rates of melanoma in the largely reflecting light away (although they
world. A few different factors fuel the Sun’s
ISP HERE
absorb a bit too). They reflect visible
E M
deadliness here, such as our proximity to
E S O U T HERN H
light as well, which
ING TH TENSE
the equator, and the fact that a big chunk
of our population has pale
NS D U R MO R E IN
skin.
ELION HAPPE IS S LIGHTLY HOW TO
EPERIH NLIG H T MAKE A SUNSCREEN
BECAUS MMER, OUR SU is why Anything that claims an SPF of more
SU they can appear white. than four on its label must meet strict
These days, zinc and titanium particles in requirements from the Therapeutic Goods
A particularly sly sunscreen are often nanometre-sized, so Administration (TGA) – just like para-
LEFT: IGOR LEVIN / GETTY IMAGES. RIGHT: ANELIYA BEKENOVA / GETTY IMAGES
one is the Earth’s variable distance from that they spread evenly across your skin cetamol, vaccines, or any prescription drugs.
the Sun. In early January, Earth hits peri- and don’t have that unsightly whitening If you’re making a sunscreen, you need
helion and is a mere 147 million kilometres effect. to choose both your active ingredients (the
(or so) from the star. In July, at aphelion, Carbon-based filters on the other hand, things that block UV light) and your excipi-
the planet is around five million kilometres absorb UV light and re-emit it as infra-red ents – everything else in the mix, which help
further out. Because perihelion happens light – or heat. (This is also how melanin the active ingredients do their job, keep the
during the Southern Hemisphere summer, pigments work, and why darker-skinned sunscreen stable, and provide other benefits
our sunlight is slightly more intense, people with more melanin have lower mela- – from the TGA’s pre-approved list.
making the UV radiation more dangerous. noma incidence.) Unlike most medicines, a lot of work
Fortunately, we now have virtually limit- “Your skin might get slightly hotter as goes into making the sunscreen appealing.
less options for protecting our skin – from a long as you stay in the UV,” says Spada. The skin-feel factor is largely decided by
gentle SPF 15 moisturiser that’s perfect for You may have heard fuss about the how the sunscreen is mixed. Sunscreens are
keeping the pink off your nose as you wend differences between ‘chemical’ (carbon- emulsions: combinations of oily things and
your way to work, up to a fabulously sticky, based) and ‘mineral’ (metal-based) watery things. They can either be oil mixed
water-resistant SPF 50+ that you can wear on sunscreens, often accompanied by the claim into water, or water mixed into oil.
the beach for hours. (In addition, of course, that ‘mineral’ is better for you because it’s “In an oil-in-water, you will feel the
to a hat, sunnies, and beach umbrella.) ‘natural’, or it physically blocks UV instead water first,” explains Spada. “And that
cosmosmagazine.com 103
UV PENETRATION INTO SKIN LAYERS
The longer-wavelength ultraviolet A rays make up about 90% of the sunlight that hits Earth, but they can penetrate deep into the skin,
causing indirect genetic damage that can lead to cancer. Shorter-wavelength ultraviolet B light affects the outer layer of our skin, also
known as the epidermis, causing sunburn and DNA damage.
UVB UVA
(280–315nm) (315–400nm) UVB UVA UVB UVA
Epidermis
Dermis
Subcutaneous
tissue
usually leads to lighter sunscreens, more one that is hypoallergenic,” says Spada. “You need to have all the evidence
cosmetically elegant. Whereas if you have a Any unnecessary ingredient adds another for safety, efficacy and quality before the
water-in-oil, what you feel first on your skin chance of triggering someone’s allergies. product is out on the shelf,” says Spada.
is the oil phase, which is usually what makes Ironically, this is why children – often Tests happen both in vitro (in a lab-based
sunscreen oily, sticky, or shiny – all the the loudest resistors of sunscreen – tend environment) and in vivo – in living –
things that usually don’t help compliance.” to get the stickiest, smelliest options. Kids’ organisms. In this case, people.
Your fancy SPF 15 moisturiser is almost sunscreen is designed to be hypoallergenic, “If you went out into the sun in the
definitely an oil-in-water type. But, if that’s and as powerful and water-resistant as middle of summer, and sat at a cafe for
the nicer version, why would you ever possible. maybe 10–15 minutes without any protec-
bother to make water-in-oils? “That’s when you can deprioritise tion, you’re probably going to get a very
It’s all about durability. If the mixture is the skin feel,” admits Spada. “Because, in mild pinkness to your skin,”
designed to dissolve in water, that’s what it the end, the parents are going to apply it says Craig
will unhelpfully do when you go swimming, whether the kid likes it or not.”
R E S IS T ORS
too. This is not to say that developers aren’t Even the ugly
T H E L OUDEST PTIONS.
– OFTEN , SMELLIEST O
looking for a formulation that does the
trick. Spada says that an
L D R E N
IS IS W HY CHI T H E S T ICKIEST Dennyson, a
LLY, TH OG E T
LEFT: GREG BARTON. RIGHT: ANELIYA BEKENOVA / GETTY IMAGES
OF SU
ening effect is advantageous Sydney.
here: it shows you where you’ve already “When we test sunscreens, we’re essen-
SPF 50+ oil-in-water applied sunscreen. (I suggest you don’t tially trying to replicate that.”
sunscreen with four hours’ water resist- share this conspiracy with any young chil- The testing is done on volunteers: two
ance has “become a bit of a holy grail”. dren in your life.) or three for prototype sunscreens, and 10
Smell presents another challenge. or more when a product is close to ready
Most of the odourless, or sweet-smelling, HOW TO TEST A SUNSCREEN for market. Volunteers have to be under
sunscreens have fragrances added to mask AND THE MYSTERY OF SPF 70, and can’t have any medical or derma-
the scent of the active ingredients. But every Each bottle of sunblock you pull off a tological conditions that would complicate
ingredient adds another complication. shelf represents several years of testing the test. There also needs to be a range of
“The challenge is to get a fragrance that and trialling, adhering to strict local and different skin tones among the volunteer
is stable when it’s under the Sun, and also international standards. pool: different amounts of melanin in the
skin give different reac- Should we test on meter, and the amount that’s transmitted
tions to sunlight. people? through is measured.
Volunteers have Human sunscreen “The main sticking point is that a
sunscreen applied to their testing has been going sunscreen acts differently on your skin [than]
lower backs, in an area on since the 1980s. But it does on a plastic plate,” says Dennyson.
that’s otherwise undamaged is it fair to ask people to To steal from Hamlet: Ay, there’s the
by sun. Then, as the volun- get sunburn, and expose rub. Skin is a remarkably tricky thing to
teer hangs over the back of a them to higher risks of mimic in a lab.
chair, a UV lamp shines several cancer? Ethics aside, the “The skin has three different key layers:
spots of light, each about the testing is expensive – even epidermis, dermis and hypodermis,”
size of a fingernail, onto the assuming you have a big explains Professor Vipul Bansal, director of
sunscreened and un-sunscreened areas. group of volunteers willing to test for free the Sir Ian Potter NanoBioSensing facility
Testers are looking for the “minimal (a much less likely prospect, post-COVID), at RMIT University. “And they support
erythemal dose”: the amount of UV that it takes time and energy to recruit, support different types of cells.”
causes erythema, or skin redness. It’s delicate and monitor them while they soak in spas. Bansal’s team is working on a test that
work: Dennyson says the total area getting And sunscreen profit margins are modest. uses a light-based sensor that changes colour
pinked is about the size of a Jatz cracker. It’s not a perfect system. Applying under UV radiation. Unlike most research,
SPF, or sun protection factor, is calcu- sunscreen and judging erythemal response which focuses on biological mimics, the
lated from these dots. If it took more than is prone to human error – or dishonesty. RMIT team is trialling nanotechnology.
50 times as much UV to get an erythema In 2019, the director of a US sunscreen “We don’t necessarily need a biologically
on the sunscreened skin, then the SPF is testing laboratory pleaded guilty to fraud active skin mimic – it could be a completely
50+. (Actually, you need your sunscreen to after it was revealed that his company had dead substrate, it could not contain any
be 60 times stronger to earn the 50+ tag – been using far fewer test subjects than they biological material,” says Bansal. “But we
the testing system deliberately builds in said they were. The scandal cost sunscreen have to think from the perspective of when
under-predictions.) companies millions of dollars in recalls and we apply sunscreen to the human body.
The application and the testing might re-tests, and prompted regulators around What kind of factors does it face?”
be punctuated by a spa bath. the world, including the TGA, to tighten For sunscreen, this boils down to elas-
“If you’re claiming four hours’ water their restrictions. ticity, absorption, texture, and – of course
resistance, that means you have to go into But scrapping human testing raises – light sensitivity.
the water for four hours, come out, dry off another ethical dilemma: without checking Dennyson thinks that, within a few
and then the product still needs to be an SPF it on a person, can you guar- years, regulators might be
50+,” says Dennyson. antee that this medicine allowing fewer humans in
Volunteers hang out in a very precise spa actually works? sunscreen trials in favour of in
at the facility – one with temperature, acidity Eurofins Dermatest vitro options. But he points
and flow all tightly controlled. They usually are involved in several out that the actual amount of
bring a book or a tablet and read or watch a different clinical trials to erythema that test subjects
movie for the duration, says Dennyson. reduce the reliance on get is very small.
(Incidentally, the spa-test time factor is human sunburns. In “This testing has
why Australia is one of only a few countries one, sunscreen is still been going on since
where you can claim four hours of water spread on a person’s the early ’80s,” he
resistance on a sunscreen – most places back – but a slightly says. “It’s been eval-
won’t allow more than 80 minutes.) different instrument uated from a clinical
Does any of this bother the volunteers? is used to shine ethical perspective,
According to Dennyson, it’s a pretty mild UV light on them, according to the
procedure: the trickiest part is not the tiny and light reflec- [World Medical
burn, but the ability to stay perfectly still tion, rather than Association’s]
for the UV testing section. “It’s not for erythemal dose, is Declaration of
everyone, but we’ve got quite a few regulars measured. Helsinki.”
that quite enjoy it.” “It’s virtually no exposure to UV light,” So, next time you’re slapping on some
Following human trials, manufacturers says Dennyson. “They get more just walking sunscreen, spare a thought for the helpful
need to prove that their sunscreen still to the station on the way to the clinic.” people who spent a punishing four hours in a
works after sitting in a bottle for six months. Another aims to dodge human skin spa bath to check it for you – and remember,
“[We test it] in incubators at different entirely, using a robotic arm to apply a apply at least a teaspoon per limb.
temperatures, different humidity, because consistent spread of sunscreen onto a plastic
you want to have a reasonable shelf life and plate. Then, UV light is shone through the ELLEN PHIDDIAN is a journalist at Cosmos. Her
stability,” says Spada. plate onto a device called a spectrophoto- article on yawning appeared last issue.
cosmosmagazine.com 105
106 COSMOS MAGAZINE
BOND GADGETS ZEITGEIST
Bond gadgets:
From reel to real
James Bond and his clever friends at MI6 have been famed over
decades for their cool cars, amazing accessories and marvellous
machines of land, sea and air. Here, Matthew Agius explains the
Bond gadgets that made it into our lives (and a few we wish had).
cosmosmagazine.com 107
Most definitely. Laser development has Submarine Car Enter Rinspeed. In 2008, the Swiss car
grown significantly since Bond foiled Gold- The Spy Who Loved Me builder launched a concept at the Geneva
finger’s plan and the technology has broad Beset by machine-gun toting helicopters Motor Show: a Spy-inspired sub-car named
applications across industry, as Professor and rocket-launching sidecars? Why not ‘sQuba’.
David Lancaster from the University of drive your sleek, straight-from-the-lot Rather than the sleek seventies lines of
South Australia’s Laser Physics and Pho- Lotus Esprit off a jetty and into the ocean. the Esprit, the sQuba looks more like Lo-
tonics Devices Laboratory explains. Audiences watching 1977’s The Spy tus’s modern ‘Elise’ model – including the
“There’s been a lot of breakthroughs Who Loved Me would have expected open top. SQuba drivers need to dress for
in how to generate laser light from elec- Roger Moore and Barbara Bach to drown, wet weather.
tricity – things called diode lasers which swim to safety or – more likely – to have “For safety reasons we have built the
are in CD players and are used in telecom- a tech trick up their sleeves courtesy of Q vehicle as an open car – so that the occu-
munications systems and LED torches,” (Desmond Llewellyn). Instead, the flick pants can get out quickly in an emergency.
Lancaster says. “LED torches are, really, the of a switch transforms the Lotus into a With an enclosed cabin, opening the door
same technology that underpins a lot of the submarine outfitted with smokescreens, might be impossible,” explained Rinspeed
laser developments.” mines and rockets. That vehicle – nick- founder Frank M Rinderknecht.
While the pointer laser that entertains named Wet Nellie – was built by a Floridian Aquatic adaptation is not where
“Can you
swim?”
James Bond
ring, to beam a unique radio frequency to scanner again, the fresh input of
unlock the weapon. Tomorrow Never Dies your print is matched to the original signa-
In 2022, firearms manufacturer Lode- Today, you probably have a smartphone that ture to authenticate access.
Star released a 9mm smart pistol that uses uses fingerprint-scan tech, but in 1997’s Capacitive scanning uses electrified
inbuilt biometric sensors, radio frequency Tomorrow Never Dies, the world was still capacitors to create a three-dimensional
cosmosmagazine.com 109
image of your print. Capacitive scanning Laser guns
ensures that every time your phone is un- The Man With The Golden Gun
locked, it’s your real thumb or finger doing The cheerfully diabolical eyes of Chris-
it, and not just a very good picture. topher Lee light up as he points a large
Ultrasonic scanning maps the high- cannon-like contraption at Bond’s seaplane.
est possible resolution image of your “This is the part I really like,” he smirks,
print. Ultrasounds measure the echoes of before pushing a button and blowing up
high-frequency soundwaves directed at Bond’s escape craft.
your body. A scan of your finger records the Lee’s Scaramanga has hijacked a solar
reflected sound directed at its ridges and energy device, which supplies the elec-
valleys. This information is used to create a tricity to operate his laser gun. Although
precise, layered image of your print. a hyper-rich assassin wielding such tech-
Many nations now use this technology nology to let off steam might be a little
to identify citizens at airports, while Brit- farfetched, it’s one of the more realistic por-
ish police have (unpopularly) adopted them REAL trayals of laser weaponry in cinema.
for ‘stop and scan’ identity checks. That’s because when Lee ‘activates’ the
In 1987, Timothy Dalton’s Bond benefit- ligently projecting directional arrows at laser. In-
ted from rocket launchers behind the front turn points that get larger as the vehicle ap- stead, we hear
lamps of his Aston Martin Vantage V8. To proaches. This technology, it’s suggested, an electronic sting and see
pick his target, Bond flicks a switch and would remove the risk of drivers divert- the result: a plane exploding. Perhaps the
two targeting reticules flash onto his wind- ing attention from the road to check their budget for The Man With The Golden Gun
screen, zeroing on a police roadblock. speedometer or maps. didn’t extend far enough to superimpose a
‘laser beam’, but the demonstration of this thing, particularly sensitive. On the other visible’ car’s tech: cameras on each
type of weapon is more accurate. hand, using a high-powered laser beam side of the car that projected their
High-power, directed-energy weap- to ground a drone avoids the unnecessary view to screens opposite. This plot device
ons like the UK Ministry of Defence’s hassle of loading a missile tube, or acci- was mocked, but Jaguar Land Rover man-
DragonFire LDEW (Laser Directed dently blowing up a nuclear reactor. aged to take that idea and implement it
Energy Weapon) and the US military’s But it’s not yet as part of in-cabin technology
Laser Weapons System (LaWS) can be an entirely safe in 2014. The technology
used to take down drones and burn out practice. used tiny cam-
boat engines. eras mounted
While the DragonFire’s first tests along the exter-
were completed at the Defence Sci- nal structure of
ence and Technology Laboratory’s the vehicle to
Porton Down range in southern Eng- capture its sur-
land just last October, development rounds. These
on LaWS began in 2010 – and it is images were
now installed and being tested aboard 2020 then projected to
“Now that’s
what I call
solar power!”
Francisco Scaramanga
the US navy’s amphibious transport dock “One of the biggest issues with lasers, the inside cabin’s frame, providing the
ship USS Portland. like [those portrayed] in Goldfinger… if you driver with a blindspot-free view.
Its discharge is invisible – like Scara- were doing that in real life, it would burn BMW also made a foray into the world
manga’s fictional weapon – and costs just your eyes out within fractions of a second, of invisible cars with the design of its ‘Vant-
cents per shot to produce much the same because the intensity is probably like look- ablack’ BMW.
effect as its Bond film equivalent. ing at a hundred suns,” says Lancaster. Vantablack is, currently, the darkest
“But it’s never been practical; it’s “Back in those days, you could look at a human-made substance. Designed for ap-
always been a technology that is just too laser ‘burning’, but you’re going to end up plication as a satellite coating, it absorbs
TOP: BMW. BOTTOM: MGM / SONY PICTURES
hard, and needs rooms of PhDs to make with spots in our eyes and probably wake up 99% of light, thus making objects coated
it work,” says Lancaster. “Now, you can blind the next day.” with it appear as two-dimensional, black
actually get these modules that are made silhouettes. The safety issues of having a
commercially for manufacturing, and Invisible autos black spectre driving amongst us, paired
that’s what the US military is using.” Die Another Day with the paint’s five-figure price tag, means
A key concern about using conven- When Q (John Cleese) rolled out Bro- we’re unlikely to see it anytime soon.
tional weapons to bring down a drone is snan’s new Aston Martin in Die Another
that firing missiles or machine guns runs Day, viewers were instead greeted MATT AGIUS is a science journalist in the Cosmos
the risk of damaging someone, or some- with an empty platform. The ‘in- newsroom. This is his first story for the magazine.
cosmosmagazine.com 111
WHERE IN THE COSMOS? MIND GAMES
,
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9
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TOP END TROPICAL SCIENCE
;
What better way to improve a bright Darwin day than with a little light Cosmos
reading – as Ward Hancock demonstrates at Dudley Point, a few kilometres
north of the city. We’d love to see where you’re reading! Please send us a shot
of your special science place: contribute@cosmosmagazine.com.
INSTRUCTIONS
Answers to each of the clues in columns 1 to 10.
QUESTION Row III reveals the answer.
GUESS WHO?
Whose Law? Decode where i = P
CLUES AND COLUMNS
HNHK 1
2
What is the study of the derivation of words? (9)
On mainland Australia, what mountain is 2228
metres above sea level? (10)
SOLUTIONS: COSMOS 96
CODEWORD
IT FIGURES
WHO SAID?
Edith Widder
A US oceanographer, marine
biologist and author, Edith
Widder is the co-founder,
CEO and Senior Scientist
at the Ocean Research &
It Figures NO.23
Conservation Association.
7 2 6 & ( (
$ ( 2 6 7 , & / * 8
& 7 $ / 8 5 5 $ ( 5 %
( 5 / 2 7 ( 5 0 & ( $
$ 7 $ / * 7 + + % 7 $ &
INSTRUCTIONS
< + 8 , 2 / 2 5 5 7 7
% Using the clues below
/ ( 9 6 1 2 6 , 2 % (
place the numbers
& ( ' , 7 + : , ' ' ( 5
1 to 16 correctly in 4 The numbers in Row C are all factors of 12.
1 5 $ 2 6 * ( $ ,
' the grid. How many 5 The sum of the three prime numbers ( $ / 2 ( 5 $
clues do you need? beginning Column 4 is 20.
cosmosmagazine.com 113
PROFILE NATALIE ROBSON
Natalie
Robson
MARINE SCIENTIST
cosmosmagazine.com
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