October 25, 2023: Astronomers spot an exoplanet smash-up, more accurate climate change models are coming and what the editors are reading this week. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | In late 2021 astronomers saw the sudden, near-total dimming of a sunlike star called ASASSN-21qj, some 1,800 light-years from Earth. Oddly enough, the star had also exhibited a sharp brightening about two and a half years earlier. Using fresh and archival data from multiple observatories, Matthew Kenworthy, an astronomer at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, and his colleagues determined that the dimming and brightening shared the same likely source: a cataclysmic collision of two Neptune-like "ice giant" planets in orbit around the star. The resulting cloud of incandescent debris would appear as an infrared flare, followed by a dimming as its shadow drifted across the star.
Competing theories: A second group of astronomers proposed that the star's strange display might have instead resulted from disintegrating interstellar comet fragments. They also estimated that the star was billions of years older than the 300-million-year age calculated by Kenworthy's group; two worlds colliding would be a rare circumstance in such a sedate, aged system.
What the experts say: "We thought the planetary arrangement of the solar system was universal until we discovered the first few exoplanets that were so different from ours," says Kate Su, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. "We will learn even more from oddballs like ASASSN-21qj." | | | A new climate modeling project could make predictions about climate disasters down to one kilometer accuracy, helping policymakers and city planners spot the neighborhoods—or even individual buildings—most vulnerable to extreme weather events. Climatologists and scientists from other disciplines are developing a network of global supercomputing centers called Earth Visualization Engines, or EVEs, which they hope to complete within the decade. These centers would work together by running climate models, interpreted by machine-learning algorithms, on supercomputers to predict climatic shifts and severe weather events locally.
Why this matters: For the last decade the best simulations have been able to predict climate change effects down to a 25-square-kilometer area. Higher-resolution modeling could show how wind shear affects certain buildings, for example, or where floodwaters might go, or what areas are most vulnerable to damage.
What the experts say: "There is a huge amount of useful climate information that isn't accessible," says Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Climate modelers are "trying to make the best of the information, get it out there, and help people make better decisions for adaptation."
More on climate:
How to Save Greenland's Massive Ice Sheet | 3 min read
Scientists Explore Pulling Potent Methane Out of the Air to Curb Warming | 5 min read
| | | • A poor night's sleep can increase the chance of a migraine the following day, according to a new study.| 6 min read | | | • In mathematics, all natural numbers can be divided into either "happy" or "sad" numbers (yes, really). And a generalization of "happiness" leads to the "narcissistic numbers," which are strongly fixated on themselves. | 9 min read | | | • The health impacts of eating spicy food are mixed, but overall they don't appear to impact mortality rates. | 4 min read | | | • The question "how many sexes are there?" can only be answered if we know more about the context the question is being asked in, write Charles Roseman, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cara Ocobock, a human biologist at the University of Notre Dame. | 5 min read | | | • A new data tool allows artists to add pixels to their creations that can "poison" image-generating AI models. | MIT Technology Review | | | • America's biggest charity groups funneled money into programs supporting vaccine misinformation. | Rolling Stone | | | Reach out anytime with feedback and suggestions for improving this newsletter: newsletters@sciam.com. Until tomorrow! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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