Chicks Hatch in Artificial Shells, New Goal to Study Earth’s Magnetosphere and More Science News
An anti-extinction company makes headlines again, the Smile spacecraft is launched into orbit to observe Earth’s magnetic shield in action, and new research casts doubt on the existence of a water plume on Europa. Also, SpaceX’s Starship V3 was lifted off for the first time. Here are this week’s most interesting science stories.
Chicken or artificial egg
Colossal Biosciences, the biotech “de-extinction” company best known for its dire wolf revival claims, announced this week that it has hatched 26 healthy chicks from 3D artificial eggshells. According to the company, it is a step towards its goal of bringing back the South Island’s largest moa (Dinornis robustus), a large bird that has been extinct for about 600 years, and the dodo.
The Colossal’s artificial eggshell is made of a silicone-based membrane lattice that allows air to pass through while still protecting the contents, and a strong support cup that holds everything together. The embryo is taken from an egg laid normally, by a hen.
“In the course of the current work, scientists examine eggs laid by real hens within 24 to 48 hours of laying, select potential candidates, and transfer the contents — minus the shell — to an artificial egg structure,” Colossal explained in a blog post. “All of the upstream biology, from fertilization to breeding, still takes place in the living bird. To use extinction, the artificial egg is intended as an incubation vessel for the later stage, not a point of genetic intervention.” The moa lays about eight times as many eggs as the emu, so no species alive today can replace the entire process. Colossal says he is looking at the Nicobar pigeon as an egg producer instead of his dodo project, and is considering an emu or tinamou for the moa.
Colossal’s methods and eradication goals have earned their fair share of critics over the years, many of whom have questioned the purpose of focusing on reviving endangered species when there are plenty of endangered species today that could benefit from this type of intervention. Colossal says its system can be used in environmental conservation. And with some scientists arguing that Colossal werewolves are not true gray wolves but genetically modified gray wolves, skeptics say the latest announcement should be taken with a grain of salt.
“They may be able to use this technology to help them create a genetically modified bird, but that’s a genetically modified bird. It’s not a moa,” Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo, told The Associated Press. “That’s not a synthetic egg because you’ve poured in all the other components that make an egg. It’s a synthetic eggshell,” Lynch added.
Embark on a spaceship to learn about Earth’s ‘invisible weapons’
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) this week launched a joint mission to collect the first X-ray observations of the Earth’s magnetic shield and study how it responds to the solar wind. It will also observe the northern lights in ultraviolet for 45 minutes at a time, longer than any other mission. The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, or Smile, is equipped with an X-ray camera and an ultraviolet camera, as well as an ion analyzer and magnetometer. It was launched on May 19 aboard a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana and is expected to begin collecting data in July.
“We’re about to see something we’ve never seen before – Earth’s invisible weapons in action,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
“The evidence collected by Smile will help us better understand planet Earth and our solar system as a whole,” added ESA Smile Project scientist Philippe Escoubet. “And the science it reveals will improve our models of Earth’s magnetic environment, which can ultimately help keep our astronauts and space technology safe for decades to come.”
Water vapor explosion in Europa? Maybe not
A new analysis of data from the Hubble Space Telescope has scientists questioning previous results that Jupiter’s moon Europa spews layers of water vapor into the atmosphere. It is thought that cracks in Europa’s ice shell may allow water from the ocean beneath it to escape, and in 2014, researchers announced that this appears to be the case. But, after looking at 14 years of Hubble data from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (HST/STIS), members of that team now say the former conclusion “is no longer as tenable.”
NASA“The evidence for Europa’s water vapor plumes is not as strong as we first understood,” said Dr. Kurt Retherford of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), one of the authors of the 2014 paper. “One of the difficulties in interpreting the data at the time was figuring out where Europa should be placed within its context,” Retherford said. “The way Hubble works has left some uncertainty about the placement relative to the center of the image. If Europa’s placement was off by even a pixel or two, it could affect how the data is interpreted.”
In the new study, the researchers looked at Lyman-alpha emission, which is associated with hydrogen atoms. “Our reanalysis took our original 99.9 percent confidence in the presence of plumes and reduced that confidence to less than 90 percent,” said lead author Dr. Lorenz Roth, of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. “That’s not enough evidence to support the certainty of the claims we made at the time.” Previous findings, they say, may be based on statistical noise.
But it’s still within the realm of possibility that Europa is home to water vapor plumes, and it may not be long before we have a better understanding of what’s going on there. In 2024, NASA launches its Europa Clipper mission to study the icy moon. It is expected to reach Jupiter in April 2030 and make its first Europa flyby the following year.
