September 21, 2023: An unprecedented year of disasters in the U.S. and a stunning new photo of the moon. Plus: Should humans really try to live off-Earth? —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Companies like NASA, SpaceX and Lockheed Martin are all busy building rockets and off-world habitation technology to enable humans to leave Earth. Spreading humanity across the solar system is an enticing vision, and exploration off-Earth is invaluable if we are ever to find other life in the galaxy. But many experts are asking if we should be leaving Earth in the first place.
The challenges: Humans are uniquely adapted to life in Earth's gravity. Space travel damages DNA (from solar and cosmic radiation), changes the microbiome, disrupts circadian rhythms, impairs vision, increases the risk of cancer, causes muscle and bone loss, inhibits the immune system, weakens the heart, and shifts fluids toward the head. Even if you could solve those physiological problems, who would front the cost of such an ambitious and unwieldy project?
What the experts say: Would it be ethical to send people to live on the moon or Mars where their risk of death is substantially higher? "It's one thing just to survive," says Brian Patrick Green, the director of the Technology Ethics Program at Santa Clara University. "But it's another thing to actually enjoy your life. Is Mars going to be the equivalent of torture?" | | | By the end of last month, the U.S. already set a new record for the annual number of billion-dollar disasters, continuing a trend toward more and costlier calamities occurring since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began tracking such data in the 1980s. At that time, a disaster causing at least $1 billion in damage hit the U.S. about every three months; now they happen about every three weeks. The wildfire that destroyed Lahaina, Hawaii, and flooding damage from Hurricane Idalia in the Southeastern U.S. are just two of 23 disasters that were confirmed to have cost at least $1 billion so far this year, which surpasses the record of 22 that was set in 2020. Why this matters: Investment in emergency management and disaster preparedness is "not even remotely keeping pace" with what the country faces each year, says Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned Tuesday that a government shutdown would jeopardize FEMA's ability to help people after disasters.
Caveats: One major type of disaster that is missing from NOAA's tracking is extreme heat, which is more deadly than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined. Wildfire smoke, also not accounted for, can have significant health and economic impacts. | | | • For the first time neuroscientists have discovered a neural code that represents the first known signal of the presence or absence of depression in the brain. | 10 min read | | | • Lillian Gilbreth pioneered time and motion efficiency in the workplaces and revolutionized kitchen design (using her 11 kids as research assistants). | 35 min listen | | | • The nation's donated blood supply is currently at "critically low levels," and floods, hurricanes and wildfires this summer have contributed to the problem. | 6 min read | | | • The Apollo moon landing conspiracy theories were early hints of the dangerous anti-vaccine, anti-science beliefs backed by politicians today, writes Phil Plait, astronomer and columnist for Scientific American. "A willingness to believe claims without evidence, to dismiss expert experience, and to entertain conspiratorial ideas are all at play [now], and smaller, more 'fun' ideas like the Apollo hoax are a foot in the door to a universe of nonsense. They may seem harmless, but they lead nowhere good," he writes. | 6 min read | | | Credit: Mosaic created by LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and ShadowCam teams with images provided by NASA/KARI/ASU | | | Shackleton Crater on the moon's south side is about 13 miles wide and 2.6 miles deep. Its interior walls are permanently in shadow, making it difficult for astronomers to see the entirety of the crater. To capture the above image, NASA researchers combined data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), an imaging system on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the moon since 2009, and ShadowCam, a NASA instrument onboard Danuri, a Korean spacecraft that launched in 2022. Read more here. | | | Try asking your family and friends if they'd ever join a mission to leave Earth and live on the moon or Mars. In my experience responses come in a variety, with some responding with a quick and vehement "NO" and others a long musing on whether they'd miss their family while having the adventure of a lifetime. One or two friends have actually signed onto candidate lists for manning early Mars missions. What about you? Would you leave Earth? | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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