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      <div class="rich-text"><p>There were nights every August and November when I couldn’t sleep.</p><p>My dad would bundle me in my sleeping bag—a forest green junior rendition of his own—and carry me to a lawn chair outside. He’d put a cup of steaming hot chocolate in my hand. Together, we’d wait for the show to begin.</p><p>These nights were not<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/sleep-deprivation-anxiety/"> bouts of insomnia</a> fought off with fresh air. My six-year-old self and my dad <i>chose</i> to stay up until the early hours of the morning. In November, when the <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/meteors-and-meteorites/leonids/in-depth/">Leonid meteor showers</a> were in full bloom, I’d sleep from 3-6 a.m. and scramble off to school red-eyed. In August, after watching the Perseids perform for hours, I’d sleep in like a teenager.</p><p>I credit these spectacles, put on by the cosmos twice a year, for my unending passion for science and understanding the world around us.</p><p>I may not be alone. The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks overnight from 2 a.m. to dawn local time, is one of the most popular of the year, Rachel Treisman<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/11/901094691/perseid-meteor-shower-peaks-after-midnight-nasa-says-its-one-of-the-best"> reports for NPR</a>: Warmer summer temperatures and high rates of meteors are hard for astronomy aficionados to resist. If you’re able, find a spot away from city lights, lie on your back or sit in a camping chair, and gaze toward the night sky. Meteors will appear like faint streaks of light that gradually fade within moments.</p><p>Meteors form when meteoroids, objects in space that range in size from dust grains to about 80-foot asteroids, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cone-meteorites/">enter Earth’s atmosphere</a> at high speed and burn up.</p><p>Debris left behind by the ancient <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/comets/109p-swift-tuttle/in-depth/">comet Swift-Tuttle </a>creates the Perseid meteors. Every year in August, Earth ventures through trails of this debris. “NASA says it&#x27;s ‘one of the best’ meteor shows of the year. That&#x27;s because of the sheer number of meteors<b>—</b>50 to 100 meteors to catch per hour as well as their <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/meteors-and-meteorites/perseids/in-depth/">fireballs</a>—larger, brighter explosions of light and color that last longer than an average meteor streak,” Treisman writes.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Unfortunately, this year’s shower will be somewhat impeded by the Moon, which is currently in its last quarter phase. This will limit observers’ view of the shower peak, “reducing the visible meteors from over 60 per hour down to 15-20 per hour,” Emily Clay<a href="https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2020/08/06/perseids-peak-watch-best-meteor-shower-of-the-year/"> reports for NASA</a>. “But the Perseids are rich in bright meteors and fireballs, so it will still be worth going out in the early morning to catch some of nature’s fireworks.”</p><p>With<a href="https://www.space.com/comet-neowise-is-dimming.html"> Comet NEOWISE</a> now making a 6,800-year exit from our solar system and a global pandemic still very much underway, any meteor shower spectacle is better than none. I think my six-year-old self would agree.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>Here’s how to watch and what you’ll see.</p>

The 2020 Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight





  
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3>10. FDA approves first major new depression treatment in decades</h3><p>In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug called esketamine, the first major new depression treatment to hit the market in decades. The drug is designed specifically for people suffering from the most extreme forms of treatment-resistant depression and is administered only in certified treatment centers via a nasal spray (rather than an oral pill). Esketamine is specifically for patients who have tried two other antidepressants with no success. </p><p>Janssen Research &amp; Development, the developer of the drug, hopes that by targeting the neurotransmitter glutamate, esketamine can offer rapid antidepressant effects, much like its cousin ketamine does. Experts’ opinions on the new drug, however, are split.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/fda-approves-first-major-new-depression-treatment-in-decades/">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="warp-edge-on3.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/warp-edge-on3.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>The Milky Way&#x27;s population of Cepheid stars suggests that our galaxy is a twisted disk. Image Credit: J. Skowron / OGLE / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>9. A new 3D map of the Milky Way flaunts our galaxy’s warped shape</h3><p>If you ever thought the Milky Way was a flat, featureless pancake, think again. This summer, we learned that the Milky Way is bent out of shape. In fact, it seems to be warped into a wave much like a beach towel being shaken free of sand.</p><p>Finding definitive proof of the Milky Way’s warp was no simple task. While astronomers have gotten pretty good at snapshotting galaxies in more distant regions of the universe, here on Earth we don’t have the best vantage point to get a birds-eye view of the celestial structure that surrounds us: Just imagine trying to map a forest by being dropped down into its center.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/milky-way-3d-map-cepheids/?linkid=71919590">Read the full article.</a></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="192854.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/GrapePlamsa-1-3.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Microwaving grapes is a surefire way to get your hands on some plasma—and an elevated risk of burning down your apartment. Image Credit: Hamza K. Khattak, Trent University; PNAS</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>8. How does microwaving grapes create plumes of plasma?</h3><p>If you’ve been tempted ever to create some plasma—and potentially burn down your home in the process—we learned this year that grapes and a microwave are the ticket. </p><p>Or, alternatively, you can turn to YouTube and (safely) watch researchers as they puzzle out the physics behind DIY plasma. Spoiler: The result is a swarm of subatomic particles that clash and collide, often emitting roiling blobs of light and heat that can resemble molten fire.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-does-microwaving-grapes-create-plumes-plasma/">Read the full article</a>. </p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="33158147074_18622a1e57_o.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/33158147074_18622a1e57_o.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>European robins make harrowing, cross-continental migrations to escape harsh winters. To guide their way, these birds and others may use quantum entanglement to &quot;read&quot; Earth&#x27;s magnetic field. Image Credit: Frank Vassen, flickr</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>7. A bird’s eye view of quantum entanglement</h3><p>Every year, billions of birds make harrowing, cross-continental migrations. But how do they know where to go?</p><p>Scientists have known for a while that Earth’s magnetic field lends a helping hand. But this year, some researchers gleaned insight into how, suggesting that at some point in history, avian evolution tapped into quantum mechanics.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/birds-quantum-entanglement/?linkid=69249680">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="kaiser4HR 2.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/kaiser4HR_2.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>An artistic three-dimensional representation cyclo[18]carbon, a ring of 18 carbon molecules. Image Credit: IBM Research</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>6. A new form of carbon is born—on a bed of salt</h3><p>In August, a new molecule called cyclo[18]carbon officially joined the carbon club. The creation, imaging, and analysis of cyclo[18]carbon helped settle decades of debate on the structure and properties of the molecule, which some researchers doubted could even be stably made in a laboratory setting.</p><p>Historically, researchers’ attempts to generate cyclocarbons in the lab resulted in volatile gas, too ephemeral to rigorously study. But the recent breakthrough shows that cyclocarbons can be generated by pruning carbon and oxygen atoms off a more complex molecule at extremely cold temperatures. Starting with a molecule made up of 24 carbons linked to six oxygens, researchers at IBM Research and Oxford University were able to generate a final structure of 18 carbons—the smallest possible ring of carbons predicted to be stable by theoretical models. </p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cyclo18carbon/">Read the full article</a>.</p></div>
  

  
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            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="ncs015__ct015__2018-05-19__16-03-59(5)__Silver backed chevrotain.JPG" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Camera-trap_photo_of_silver-backed_chevrotain_.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A wild silver-backed chevrotain appeared! Image Credit: SIE/GWC/Leibniz-IZW/NCNP Copyright holder: Andrew Tilker</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>5. Feast your eyes on the first-ever photos of a silver-backed chevrotain in the wild</h3><p>Once upon a time, there was a fanged, cat-sized deer-like creature with a glossy silver back. Then, like many legendary beasts, it was “lost to science.”</p><p>Until this November, that is. Though Western researchers have known about the skittish silver-backed chevrotain for more than a century, they’ve only managed to collect five specimens, all corpses obtained from hunters in Vietnam. The last of these appeared nearly three decades ago. But this year, with the help of local knowledge and a cluster of well-placed camera traps, Global Wildlife Conservation biologist Andrew Tilker and his team snapped the first-ever photos and videos of the silver-backed chevrotain in the wild.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/silver-backed-chevrotain-rediscovered-vietnam/?linkid=76835332">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="38730047881_fdb7d67e94_o.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/38730047881_fdb7d67e94_o.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>As Alzheimer&#x27;s disease progresses, communication between brain cells breaks down. New research suggests that one possible cause for this deterioration may be a brain infection by <i>Porphyromonas gingivalis, </i>a bacterium known for causing gum disease. Image Credit: National Institute on Aging/NIH, flickr</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>4. Could Alzheimer’s begin with bacteria that cause gum disease?</h3><p>In individuals affected by Alzheimer’s disease, communication between brain cells breaks down over time. Early this year, a study suggested one peculiar potential cause for this deterioration: a brain infection by a bacterium known for causing gum disease.</p><p>In January, researchers reported that the bacterium, <i>Porphyromonas gingivalis</i>, might be capable of traversing the path from mouth to brain, where it can trigger chemical changes that damage cognitive function. These findings suggest that some cases of Alzheimer’s might have an infectious cause—and a new drug that blocks this process is now in clinical trials.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/alzheimers-bacteria-gum-disease/?no-cache=&amp;linkid=62727014">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="iStock-500746894.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/iStock-500746894.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A complex tangle of social factors may encourage girls to prioritize verbal skills from a young age. But being excellent at reading doesn’t make a person bad at math—no matter their gender. Image Credit: Imgorthand, iStock</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>3. Girls’ superb verbal skills may contribute to the gender gap in math</h3><p>Being excellent at reading doesn’t make a person bad at math—no matter their gender.</p><p>According to previous studies, including <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0021276">a meta-analysis</a> that probed gender differences in recent studies of mathematics performance, girls are just as good at math as boys are. But a complex amalgam of social factors may encourage girls to prioritize verbal skills from a young age, a study published in July suggests.</p><p>Drawing on data from more than 300,000 high school students from 64 countries, the study found that because girls’ verbal skills outshine their already high marks in math, many who do every bit as well as their male peers in mathematics still choose more humanities-centric careers.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/gender-gap-math-comparative-advantage/">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><h3>2. Six stupendous reasons to appreciate the heck out of squirrels</h3><p>Beady eyes, bushy tails, can’t lose: We’re talking squirrels. And whether you love these nut-crazed rodents or not, there’s no denying that despite being zany, squirrels are also aerodynamic and brainy.</p><p>On January 21, for Squirrel Appreciation Day, <i>NOVA</i> published a roundup of six squirrel facts—and it quickly became a fan favorite. So if you’re still in the dark about squirrel-induced electrical power outages, squirrels eating spring rolls, the power of squirrel memory, and how squirrels can give investment bankers a run for their money, here’s your ticket out.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/six-snippets-squirrel-science/">Read the full article</a>.</p><p></p><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="iStock-878222138.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/iStock-878222138.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Now that&#x27;s a purrfect pair. Image Credit: AkilinaWinner, iStock</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>1. Study finds kittens bond with their human caregivers like babies do</h3><p>Sorry, dogs: You may not be humans’ only faithful companions. Though cats have their critics, it turns out that they can be extremely social with other felines and humans alike.</p><p>In September, researchers revealed that much like human infants, cats are “attached” to their caretakers (and like babies, felines have different ways of expressing their attachment). When analyzing humans, dogs, and cats, the research team found that roughly 60 percent of infants or pets are “secure,” meaning they appear to use their caregivers as a safe base from which to explore their surroundings. Of the felines that seemed, well, insecure, fewer acted aloof or avoidant than one might expect.</p><p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cats-secure-attachment/">Read the full article</a>.</p></div>
  

  
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<p>We’ve counted down our ten most-read articles of 2019 and found that health and medicine, physics—and of course animals—were fan-favorite topics this year.</p>

The 10 most popular NOVA stories of 2019





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Sporting a bulbous body, deflated head, and eight tiny caterpillar legs, this creature looks like a toddler’s drawing of a Macy’s Day Parade balloon. But the humble, microscopic tardigrade just might hold the secret to saving countless human lives.</p><p>Also known as a “moss piglet” or “water bear” because of its striking appearance, the tardigrade is no stranger to experimentation. In the name of science, researchers have sent water bears to space, zapped them with X-rays, thrown them into a deep freeze, and heated them to extreme temperatures. And to everyone’s amazement, their <a href="https://www.livescience.com/62720-tardigrade-lifespan.html">tardigrade subjects almost always survived</a>, by resorting to their signature move: hibernation.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Experts suggest that these nearly indestructible animals, which are just as at home on a backyard tree as in a sewage treatment plant in Antarctica, might live to see the eventual death of the Sun.</p><p>Most organisms that thrive in extreme conditions do so by producing a special sugar called trehalose, which protects them from drying out. Strangely, most tardigrade species lack this sugar. But they do possess cytosolic-abundant heat soluble (CAHS) proteins, which have been found only in water bears and separate them from Planet Earth’s other extremophiles (organisms capable of surviving in extreme environments). University of North Carolina biologist <a href="https://endeavors.unc.edu/the-survivors/">Dr. Thomas Boothby</a> and his colleagues discovered that when tardigrades are deprived of water, their production of CAHS proteins is kicked into overdrive.</p><p>In extreme conditions, <a href="https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/record/uuid:77b143b8-ec74-49f6-8a3d-6cffe0f81725">CAHS proteins</a> create a 3D gel-like network, which protects tardigrades’ other proteins from unfolding and combining with each other—a process that can lead to cell death. Boothby wondered if CAHS proteins could be recruited to protect vulnerable proteins that humans rely on, such as vaccines and blood in blood banks, both of which are protein-based and need to keep cool to stay viable. Medical experts call the temperature-controlled supply chain of vaccines and other protein-based pharmaceuticals the “cold chain.”</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Water Bear 2.mov.01_04_58_05.Still001.png" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Water_Bear_2.mov.01_04_58_05.Still001.width-800.png"/><figcaption><p>A water bear, as seen through a microscope, munches on waste in a sewage treatment plant at McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. Image credit: Arlo Perez, WGBH</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>New methods that allow for the safe and stable preservation of cells and bioreagents (biological substances like enzymes) are needed, “particularly when delivering drugs and medicine to inaccessible areas, or to areas that lack an infrastructure to maintain the cold chain,” says <a href="https://spu.edu/academics/college-of-arts-sciences/biology/faculty-staff/tenlen-jenny">Dr. Jenny Tenlen</a>, a biologist at Seattle Pacific University who studies tardigrade development. “Because of tardigrades&#x27; extreme stress tolerance, they have the potential to provide biological solutions to this problem.” About 90 percent of the cost of vaccination programs in developing countries, Boothby adds, comes from the need to keep vaccines cold.</p><p>If tardigrade proteins could protect protein-based pharma, Boothby says, we wouldn’t have to rely on the cold chain to keep vaccines stable. “It might not seem like a big deal to us in a developed world,” he says. “But in other parts of the world, keeping things cold can be a logistical and economic burden.”</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Now, Boothby and his team are partnering with Cellphire, a biotech company focused on cell stabilization technology, to apply tardigrade proteins to pharmaceuticals. If successful, this research could make it easier to maintain vaccine supplies in developing countries and military zones, both of which can lack reliable access to refrigeration.</p><p>To collect large amounts of CAHS proteins, the team inserts copies of tardigrade genes responsible for making CAHS proteins into bacteria, which are notoriously prolific. “We can grow billions or trillions of bacteria a day and engineer them to make the protein,” Boothby says.</p><p>Converting bacteria into human protein factories is nothing new. The pharmaceutical industry uses them to create everything from insulin to cancer-fighting interferon. Safely extracting a desired protein from its engineered bacterial creators is always vital, Boothby explains, as bacteria can produce a toxic substance called an endotoxin. (To ensure its endotoxin cleanup is thorough, Boothby’s team is conducting immune studies in which CAHS proteins derived from the bacteria are inserted into mice.)</p><p>Already, Boothby and his team have compared tardigrade proteins’ ability to preserve vaccines to that of FDA-approved protectants. CAHS proteins, they found, protect the proteins within pharmaceuticals about 10 times more efficiently than current methods.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="150323-F-IT851-011.JPG" class="richtext-image full-width" height="521" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/150323-F-IT851-011.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Vaccines and other protein-based pharmaceuticals currently rely on a temperature-controlled supply chain. In developing countries, it can be logistically challenging and immensely expensive to keep vaccines cold, and therefore viable. Image Credit: U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Areca T. Wilson</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>The team’s ultimate goal, Boothby says, is to use CAHS proteins to protect human blood in blood banks. It&#x27;s a challenge, because our blood is much more complex than the protein-based pharmaceuticals the team is currently working with. Blood is made up of many types of cells, each of which contain different types and ratios of proteins. So, the team will first attempt to use CAHS proteins to preserve each individual kind of cell found in our blood. If they can master this, the researchers hope, they can use CAHS proteins to preserve blood in its complete state.</p><p>“The FDA keeps a tap on refrigerated blood for 60 days,” Boothby explains. “After that, you have to throw it out. You can imagine if there are soldiers on patrol, they can’t carry a mini fridge on their back. But, if we can get whole blood at a dry state at ambient or even hot temperatures and soldiers can carry it and someone needs a transfusion, they can just add water and use it.”</p><p>Tenlen, who is not involved in the new research, believes Boothby’s preliminary work “provides encouraging evidence” that CAHS proteins can be used to stabilize biological substances under challenging conditions. But, she cautions, Boothby and his team will have to be careful that CAHS proteins don&#x27;t introduce side effects when used to preserve vaccines and human blood.</p><p>If the team does succeed in stabilizing vaccines and human cells, the societal impact—all originating from the blimp-like tardigrade—could be enormous.</p><p>“You see these animals do these weird things and produce these materials that no other organism has,” Boothby says. “As I was looking into how tardigrades survive desiccation I started to think about how useful these proteins could be for people… And that’s what we should do, as good citizens of the world: help people.”</p></div>
  

  
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<p>Special proteins that help tardigrades survive extreme conditions might be the key to extending the shelf life of life-saving pharmaceuticals.</p>

After Conquering Space, Water Bears Could Save the Global Vaccine and Blood Supply





  
      <div class="rich-text"><h3>1. <i>New Horizons</i> nails the most distant flyby in history</h3><p>Just 33 minutes after ringing in the New Year, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory cheered and threw confetti a second time. The<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/new-horizons-ultima-thule-preview/"> <i>New Horizons</i></a> spacecraft had just conducted a flyby of a Kuiper Belt object 4 billion miles from Earth. And as the sun rose on January 1, <i>New Horizons</i> beamed back its first close-up images of the 19-mile-long peanut-shaped space rock, officially named 2014 MU69.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Images eventually revealed 2014 MU69 (initially nicknamed “Ultima Thule”), to be a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/so-long-snowman-ultima-thule-flatter-we-thought/">surprisingly flat</a> “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/ultima-thule-is-a-kiss-between-two-rocky-lobes/">contact binary</a>,” a body composed of two once-separated rocks that slowly gravitated toward each other until they lightly touched and fused. Scientists believe the flyby data could offer insight into how planets formed in our solar system billions of years ago.</p><p>In November, NASA changed the rock’s nickname from Ultima Thule, a term <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223176-distant-space-rock-known-as-ultima-thule-renamed-to-avoid-nazi-links/">with links to</a> the Nazi party, to “Arrokoth,” which means “sky” in the Powhatan/Algonquian language.</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Ultima Thule Comes Into Focus as New Images Reveal Secrets Hero" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/ultima-thule-comes-into-focus-as-new-images-re.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>2014 MU69 is revealed to be a two-tiered snowman. According to the New Horizons team, this image supports the idea that planets in our system formed as bits of raw planetary matter coalesced over time. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>2.    A second HIV patient enters long-term remission</h3><p>Twelve years after a first patient was declared to be rid of HIV, another person achieved a similar milestone this year. In March, with the help of a stem cell transplant from a virus-resistant donor, the anonymous individual entered long-term<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/second-patient-has-entered-long-term-remission-hiv/"> remission from HIV</a>.</p><p>In both cases, remission followed a transplant of bone marrow from a person with a mutation in the gene that encodes the protein CCR5, which many HIV strains use to infiltrate cells. Neither treatment was originally intended to eliminate the infection itself, but to treat blood cancers that had spread in both individuals.</p><p>While the intervention is likely to be effective in only a small fraction of HIV-positive individuals, the 2019 case shows that its efficacy was more than a one-time event.</p><p></p><h3>3. Scientists reveal the first-ever black hole image</h3><p>In April, we were able to feast our eyes on the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/first-black-hole-image/">first-ever image</a> of a black hole. The black hole, whose image was generated from data captured by a network of eight radio observatories that make up the Event Horizon Telescope, dwells in the center of a galaxy some 55 million light-years away from Earth.</p><p>As popular as the black hole image was, another aspect of the story that quickly unfolded online: the contribution of 29-year-old MIT scientist Katie Bouman, who crafted an algorithm to help translate the telescope data into the black hole image. Bouman, captured in a photo with a laptop, beaming behind her folded hands,<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/katie-bouman-hardly-knew-what-a-black-hole-was-her-algorithm-helped-us-see-one"> quickly became a symbol</a> for women’s accomplishment in astronomy and computer science. But, Marina Koren writes for<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/katie-bouman-black-hole/587137/"> <i>The Atlantic</i></a>, “This one image tapped into a multitude of questions about the role of women in science, the myth of the lone genius, and the pressure scientists have to promote themselves and their work on social media.”</p><p>“No one algorithm or person made this image,” Bouman later wrote, referring to the black hole picture, in a Facebook post. “It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.” </p><p></p><h3>4. First CRISPR clinical trials in the U.S. take place</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="CRISPR-large.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/CRISPR-large.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>CRISPR-Cas9 is a tool that lets scientists cut and insert small pieces of DNA at precise areas along a DNA strand. | Photo credit: Public Domain</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>In April, researchers began the first CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing clinical trials in people in the United States. In the trials, scientists used<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/what-is-crispr-gene-editing/"> CRISPR</a>, a powerful gene-editing technique derived from an ancient bacterial immune system, to combat cancer and blood disorders. That month, two cancer patients—one with myeloma and one with sarcoma—were <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/16/712402435/first-u-s-patients-treated-with-crispr-as-gene-editing-human-trials-get-underway">treated using CRISPR</a>.</p><p>In the cancer and blood disorder trials, researchers remove some cells from a patient’s body, edit the cells’ DNA using CRISPR, and inject the cells back in, “now hopefully armed to fight disease,” Tina Hesman Saey writes for<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/crispr-gene-editor-first-human-clinical-trials"> <i>Science News</i></a>. But in another trial, conducted by Editas Medicine in Cambridge, Mass., researchers are using CRISPR to edit DNA directly in the human body by “snipping a small piece of DNA out of cells in the eyes of people with an inherited form of blindness,” Saey writes.</p><p>The trials come on the heels of Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s gene-editing on twin girls born in November 2018, which was widely criticized as premature and<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/crispr-gene-editing-live-births/"> highly unethical</a>. . </p><p></p><h3>5. New fossils capture the day the dinosaurs died—and the million years after</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Mammal Fossils Fill in Missing Piece of the Timeline of Life Hero" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/mammal-fossils-fill-in-missing-piece-of-the-ti.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Mammal fossils like this one, discovered by a team of paleontologists and paleobotanists led by Tyler Lyson in Corral Bluffs, Colorado, fill in a missing piece of the timeline of life. Image Credit: HHMI Tangled Bank Studios </p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>This year, scientists gleaned new insight into the day the dinosaur-killing asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, and the first million years after the impact.</p><p>In April, paleontologist and graduate student Robert DePalma claimed to unveil an<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/new-fossils-mass-extinction-wiped-out-dinosaurs/"> unprecedented time capsule</a> of the asteroid-induced catastrophe. He reported finding scorched tree trunks and hundreds of well-preserved fossil fish beneath sediment at a site in North Dakota, forming a snapshot of the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/fossil-discovery-could-offer-glimpse-into-day-the-dinos-died/">first minutes and hours</a> after impact. (Some experts remain cautious about the finding, due in part to the fact that DePalma’s discovery was first announced in a <i>New Yorker</i> article before publication of the peer-reviewed paper.)</p><p>Then, in October,<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/fossils-million-years-after-dinosaurs-died/"> new fossils</a> that capture the million-year timeline of life after the dinosaurs died were revealed. Discovered in Colorado’s Corral Bluffs by paleontologist Tyler Lyson and his team, the fossils showcase the extraordinary resilience of life in the wake of disaster and help reveal the evolutionary journey of<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/rise-of-the-mammals/"> the mammals</a> that survived the asteroid.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3>6. Racism persists in medicine and science</h3><p>With the use of artificial intelligence on the rise, one serious flaw continued to make headlines in 2019: <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzwgx/racial-bias-in-ai-isnt-getting-better-and-neither-are-researchers-excuses">racial bias</a>. In October, researchers announced that a particular algorithm, which predicts who might benefit from follow-up care and affects 100 million Americans, underestimates black patients’ need for additional treatment. The algorithm <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/racial-bias-medical-algorithm-black-patients/">underestimates the health needs</a> of black patients even when they’re sicker than their white counterparts.</p><p>Additionally, the U.S. remains one of the most dangerous developed nations in which to be pregnant and give birth, particularly for minorities. “Pregnancy-related deaths are rising in the United States and the main risk factor is being black,” Mike Stobbe and Marilynn Marchione write for <a href="https://apnews.com/4907da5c58c84a708a548c4ea18fc5c7"><i>AP News</i></a>. A CDC report concludes “black women, along with Native Americans and Alaska natives, are three times more likely to die before, during or after having a baby, and more than half of these deaths are preventable,” Stobbe and Marchione write.</p><p>Also this year, researchers further investigated why black scientists are less likely to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) than their white counterparts. A study published in October illustrated that topic choice contributes to the lower rates of NIH awards going to black scientists. “Specifically,” Jeffrey Mervis writes for <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/study-identifies-key-reason-black-scientists-are-less-likely-receive-nih-funding"><i>Science Magazine</i></a>, “black applicants are more likely to propose approaches, such as community interventions, and topics, such as health disparities, adolescent health, and fertility, that receive less competitive scores from reviewers.” </p><p></p><h3>7. A new link is drawn between humans and Denisovans</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Denisova_Phalanx_distalis.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="449" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Denisova_Phalanx_distalis_9gGhHID.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>A replica of a fragment of a Denisovan finger found in Denisova Cave, Siberia, in 2008. Image Credit: Thilo Parg, Wikimedia Commons</p><div class="credit"><p></p></div></figcaption>
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            <p>New findings in 2019 added to anthropologists’ understanding of Denisovans, a species of early human that likely shared the planet with <i>Homo sapiens</i> as recently as 50,000 years ago.</p><p>This fall, scientists learned that although Denisovans’ DNA ties them more closely to Neanderthals, their fingers may have looked<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/denisovan-finger/"> more like ours</a>, suggesting Neanderthals’ broader digits evolved after their lineage split off from the Denisovans around 410,000 years ago. “A few more fossils,” Bruce Bower writes for<a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mysterious-denisovan-hominid-fossils-dna-top-science-stories-2019-yir"> <i>Science News</i></a>, “plus genetic analyses indicated Denisovans were close relatives and occasional mating partners of Neanderthals and <i>Homo sapiens</i> tens of thousands of years ago. But there was too little evidence to say what Denisovans looked like or how they behaved.”</p><p></p><h3>8. Google claims quantum supremacy</h3><p>Physicists reached a milestone in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/six-ways-quantum-computers-could-change-the-world/">quantum computing</a> this year, a method of computing that uses quantum physics to solve complex problems quickly. </p><p>In October, Google said it had achieved “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/google-quantum-supremacy/">quantum supremacy</a>.” Its AI Quantum Team presented evidence that it had built a quantum computer that needs only 200 seconds to solve a problem that would have taken IBM’s Summit, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, 10,000 years to crack. Though IBM disputed the claim, others in the computing community are tentatively optimistic about the breakthrough’s promise. If validated, it may bring us closer to a future of ultra-efficient computing.</p><p></p><h3>9. Saturn now has the most moons in the solar system</h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="saturns-rings" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/saturns-rings.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  Saturn, as viewed from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its 2009 equinox.
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            <p>Just when you thought Saturn couldn’t get <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/saturn-facts-ringed-gas-giant-planet/">any more awesome</a>, it secured yet another claim to fame: <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/saturn-20-new-moons/">the most known moons</a> of any planet in our solar system (sorry, Jupiter). </p><p>On October 7, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced that researchers discovered an additional 20 moons orbiting Saturn, bringing its grand total to a whopping 82. Jupiter, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/jupiter-facts-biggest-planet-solar-system/">largest and oldest planet</a> in our solar system, has 79.</p><p>The latest discoveries were made possible by Hawaii’s Subaru telescope. A team led by Carnegie Science’s Scott S. Sheppard <a href="https://sites.google.com/carnegiescience.edu/sheppard/home/newjupitermoons2018?authuser=0">first eyed them</a> in the spring of 2017, but because faraway moons are dim and tough to spot, researchers used Subaru to scan the skies periodically throughout the following years to confirm their finding. Then, they used a computer algorithm to link the data through time and confirm that the moons were indeed reliably orbiting Saturn.</p><p></p><h3>10. Climate change intensifies, and youth fight back </h3><p></p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="glacier_2048x1152" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/glacier_2048x1152.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption>
  Retreating glaciers are slowly raising Earth's sea levels.
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            <p>Less than a week after the U.N. climate talks came to a close in Madrid this month, Australia recorded its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/19/419c-australia-records-hottest-ever-day-one-day-after-previous-record?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=facebook">hottest day ever</a>, one day after its previous record. Just a few months ago, wildfires raged across not only the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/12/how-will-california-prevent-more-mega-wildfire-disasters/">American West</a> and Australian Outback but also <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/12/how-to-live-with-mega-fires-portugal-forests-may-hold-secret/">Europe</a> and the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/18/amazon-rainforest-still-burning-more-fires-future/4011238002/">Amazon</a>, an occurrence that many climatologists believe may have been exacerbated by <a href="https://grist.org/justice/wildfires-are-getting-worse-and-so-is-the-deadly-smoke-they-bring-with-them/">climate change</a>-induced drought and high temperatures. And in May, a United Nations report claimed that one million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction—more than in any other period in human history—with alarming implications for human survival. The warming climate, which heightens the effects of overfishing, pesticide use, pollution, and urban expansion is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/05/06/one-million-species-face-extinction-un-panel-says-humans-will-suffer-result/">a major driver</a>, the report concludes. </p><p>Three weeks ago, a “bleak” climate report, also from the U.N., predicted that global carbon emissions will climb “despite promises from almost 200 nations to address climate change, propelling temperatures upward and threatening to shatter the threshold of 2°C that scientists say would invite dramatic changes to ecology and the economy,” Nathaniel Gronewald writes for <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/new-un-climate-report-offers-bleak-emissions-forecast"><i>Science Magazine</i></a>. And many declared this month’s COP25 climate talks to be <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/how-to-fix-the-biggest-issue-plaguing-un-climate-talks-1840480211">a massive failure</a>.</p><p>But climate activists, particularly teens, have seized the spotlight this year. Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, was just named <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/business/media/time-person-of-the-year-greta-thunberg.html"><i>TIME’s</i> Person of the Year</a>. And at COP25, official youth constituency representatives expressed their disappointment to leaders and officials, Kartik Chandramouli writes for <a href="https://india.mongabay.com/2019/12/youth-rising-at-cop25-they-came-they-protested-they-negotiated/"><i>Mongabay</i></a>. “Do you want to be remembered as the ones who had the chance to act but decided not to as betrayers of our generation, of indigenous people and communities desperately fighting on the ground?” Youth representatives said. “We are rising, we are fighting and we will win.”</p></div>
  

  
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<p>Black holes, gene editing, and quantum computing wowed us—while new climate findings and racial bias in medicine brought renewed urgency.</p>

The top 10 science stories of 2019





  
      <div class="rich-text"><p>Aurora Basinski crouches in a tent on a glacier jutting out from Antarctica, half a mile off solid land. She’s tinkering with a device called a VMP, which measures water temperature and salinity, when she starts cursing.</p><p>Thirty-six hours before, a storm moved off West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, giving Basinski and her fellow investigators a tiny, critical window of time. They dug their equipment out of snow drifts as tall as themselves and on January 8 began hot-water drilling a 14-inch-wide hole down into the glacier. </p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>Basinski is one of about 50 researchers working on the eastern tongue of Thwaites Glacier as part of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (<a href="https://thwaitesglacier.org/">ITGC</a>). The $50 million, five-year study is supported by the U.S. Antarctic Program and the British Antarctic Survey. The goal is to better understand how climate change is affecting Thwaites, nicknamed the “doomsday glacier” because it’s melting so quickly. Researchers will deploy all manner of scientific instruments across its surface. But to really understand what’s happening with Thwaites, they also need to send instruments into the water below it. </p><p>And that means drilling a hole through 2,000 feet of ice.</p><p>The team on the aptly named <a href="https://thwaitesglacier.org/projects/melt">MELT project</a> drills in shifts for 36 hours and by the time they hit water below the glacier, their borehole is twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Basinski and her advisor, New York University mathematician and ITGC Principal Investigator David Holland, immediately begin a “science shift,” trading in drilling tools for fine-tuned scientific instruments. It’s already the middle of the night, and when Basinski’s VMP acts up, she&#x27;s forced to stay awake fiddling with the device for another 12 hours. </p><p>“You want to get good data,” she says. “You have one shot.”</p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Thwaites_Storm.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Thwaites_Storm.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Winds blow through the ITGC research camp where David Holland and Aurora Basinski conduct their work. Image Credit: David Holland and Aurora Basinski</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <h3>Runaway Glacier</h3><p>Thwaites Glacier is a fragile piece of one of the most <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-glacier-has-retreated-3-miles-in-22-years/">rapidly changing</a> places on Earth. That pace of change is what caught people’s attention about two decades ago, Holland says. Thwaites’ elevation falls by several feet every year. Scientists theorize that as the leading edge of a glacier retreats farther inland, the thicker ice above begins flowing down toward the sea faster. This creates a runaway effect of retreat, thinning, further retreat, and, ultimately, collapse.</p><p>“If a glacier collapse occurs in the next decade to century, or centuries, it will be here,” Holland says. “And it will be triggered by warm water and be unstoppable.” Thwaites could also trigger ice loss in connecting areas of West Antarctica, scientists believe. “Everything that we’ve seen, particularly from satellite and remote sensing in the last decade or so points to this area becoming more active,” says Paul Cutler, program director of glaciology, ice core science and geomorphology at the National Science Foundation. “And it’s not acting in isolation. If it starts rapidly retreating, it starts acting on the neighboring glaciers as well.”</p><p>The ice shelf that Basinski, Holland, and the rest of their team shared from mid-December to mid-January is like an ice cube in a glass of water. Because it’s over the ocean, it won’t directly contribute to sea level rise. But about half a mile away is what scientists call the grounding zone, where this “flowing” piece of Thwaites sitting on the water meets the “grounded” part attached to the seafloor.</p><p>It’s this ice atop solid ground—a massive ice cube on a countertop—that climatologists worry about. “The ice cube I’m standing on is holding [back] the ice cube on the kitchen counter,” Holland says from Thwaites’ eastern ice shelf. </p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Thwaites_Graphic_Final.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="350" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Thwaites_Graphic_Final.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Changing winds and currents carry warm water beneath Thwaites Glacier, accelerating ice melt on its underside. As the glacier loses its grip on the seafloor, the grounding line shifts back, hastening retreat. Image Credit: International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>Already, the melting of Thwaites Glacier, which is roughly the size of Florida, accounts for 4% of global <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2680/new-study-finds-sea-level-rise-accelerating/">sea level rise</a> on an ongoing basis. And the amount of ice flowing from it and its glacial neighbors has almost doubled in the last 30 years. Current mathematical models illustrate that if it were to collapse, which scientists believe will happen in the coming decades or centuries, much of western Antarctica’s remaining ice will become unstable. </p><p>If Antarctica were to lose only Thwaites, the Earth’s oceans would rise by about two to three feet or more, researchers believe. That’s enough to cause major flooding in New York City and <a href="https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/9/12.5321/45.4564/?theme=water_level&amp;map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&amp;contiguous=true&amp;elevation_model=best_available&amp;water_level=3.0&amp;water_unit=ft">completely engulf</a> some low-lying cities like New Orleans and Venice, Italy, with seawater.</p><p>And if the loss of Thwaites triggered the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the global sea level could rise by more than 10 feet. “It can feel very far away,” Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University who is not part of the ITGC, says of melting glaciers. But “coastal sea rise is a problem for communities in itself,” she says. If the seas were to rise by 10 feet, Holland says, the effects on countries like Bangladesh, coastal states like Florida, and major cities like New York, London, and Shanghai will be “profound.” </p><p>Higher seas can also mean intensified storms. “On the East Coast we’re concerned because we already see sea level rise [playing out] in the background,” says Cutler, who’s based in Virginia. “Storms are able to encroach inland.” Even a minor hurricane, which wouldn’t cause intense flooding today, Garner says, could have a much worse effect in deeper coastal waters. </p><p>And to make matters worse, storms <i>themselves</i> seem to be growing. Garner’s <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/114/45/11861">research shows</a> that from 850 to 1850, storms similar in size to Hurricane Sandy were likely to occur about once every 500 years in New York. Today, Hurricane Sandy is what she calls a “25-year storm,” meaning one that has a 1 in 25 chance of hitting in any given year. But if our current patterns of carbon dioxide emissions continue—and glacial melt along with them—Hurricane Sandy will be a 5-year storm in New York by 2100.</p><h3>Ground Truth</h3><p><a href="https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/primer/climate-models">Climate models</a> rely on mathematics to describe how energy and matter interact in the atmosphere, on land, and in the ocean. About 30 organizations around the world, Holland says, continuously develop them to better understand the complexities of the Earth’s past, current, and future climate. But these models are limited, unable to account for the day-by-day shifting of glaciers’ grounding lines, for example, or features yet to be discovered. This leaves sea-level-rise projections with “a big asterisk called ‘Thwaites,’” Holland says. “And Thwaites is gonna run the whole show.” </p><p>That’s where the ITGC comes in. </p><p>The location, shape, and behavior of Thwaites’ grounding line, a feature that is bound to play heavily into future climate models, was unknown a decade ago. But from 2011 to 2014, Pietro Milillo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and his team used satellite data to map out the grounding-line retreat of Thwaites and the neighboring Pine Island, Smith, and Kohler Glaciers. </p><p>Shortly after, a team of Seoul National University scientists used remote sensing data to show that the Thwaites Ice Shelf—the part of the glacier hanging over the ocean—is disintegrating quickly and its rate of shedding ice into the sea is accelerating. That made Thwaites a “top spot” for concern, Cutler says.</p><p>Then, in January 2019, Milillo’s team made <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7322">a startling discovery</a>. </p><p>Their remote sensing work revealed a Manhattan-sized cavity against the grounding zone on Thwaites’ western side, a place too crevassed for scientists to conduct on-the-ground research. The existence of such a cavity suggests that warm water below Thwaites licks at an already-unstable section of its ice shelf—a phenomenon that could hasten Thwaites’ retreat, but isn’t accounted for in models, Milillo says.</p><p>His team’s findings also revealed that Thwaites’ grounding line moves by a few miles with the tides—another feature that’s not taken into account by existing climate models.</p><p>Even the boundaries of Thwaites are hard to define, says Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a principal investigator of the ITGC. Whereas the boundary between glacier and rock are well-defined in places like Yosemite, he says, “in Antarctica, you more or less have a sheet of ice. Thwaites is a fast-flowing piece of ice on the sides, rubbing against slow-moving ice in the middle. There is no rock wall.”</p><p>About three decades of research show that these boundaries can shift over time as the glacier widens and narrows, or the grounding line shifts. “Models aren’t great at predicting that right now,” Tulaczyk says. “It’s much easier to write code where things are set and don’t change.”</p><p>Though they lack a layer of complexity, today’s climate models do offer a glimpse into what Earth’s future might look like. For comparison, imagine planning a road trip with only a globe. You’d be able to draw a line from your starting point to where you want to end up. Once you hit the road, with a globe in hand, you could hypothetically head in the proper direction. But to successfully end up in the state, town, and street of your destination (and get traffic reports along the way), you’ll likely want something more detailed. </p><p>Similarly, climate models need another layer of complexity to better assess Thwaites’ future and its potential effects on the planet: They’ll need to evolve from globes into Google Maps.</p></div>
  

  
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      <div class="rich-text"><h3>A Glimpse Beneath the Ice</h3><p>Back on the ice in Antarctica, after 12 hours of toying with the VMP, or vertical microstructure profiler, in a research tent, Basinski and Holland finally figure out what’s wrong with the highly sensitive probe: The noise from the generators surrounding them had created electrical interference strong enough to throw off the VMP’s readings. </p><p>Once fixed, Basinski lowers the VMP—a little probe on a long wire—down the 2,000-foot borehole and into the water below. The instrument soon gets a read on turbulence, the mixing of the colder surface water and warmer, saltier, water below, a phenomenon that can stoke further melting of the glacier potentially faster than warm air can. </p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Thwaites_Borehole.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Thwaites_Borehole.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>The 2,000-foot borehole, referred to as a “Thwaites Glacier access point,” stays covered when scientists aren’t deploying their instruments. Image Credit: David Holland and Aurora Basinski</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
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            <p>“It’s really exciting to have it in the ocean and to see the data that is coming back,” Basinski says. “It all looked good and reliable.”</p><p>Sharing this corner of Thwaites is Britney Schmidt, an ITGC principal investigator and Georgia Tech astrobiologist, and her team, which is responsible for a 12-foot torpedo-like robot called Icefin. On January 10, Schmidt and her team lean over the borehole and pull on Icefin’s tether, guiding the yellow robot out of the water and ice after six hours of exploration, its third of four trips. Icefin carries data about the temperature and salinity of the water in Thwaites’ cavity as well as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTQWCCU8CpE">first-ever images</a> from the grounding zone. Unlike the researchers’ other instruments, Icefin can be guided away from the borehole using a remote control, allowing the researchers to capture readings over a wider area.</p><p>“Deploying a complex system is never straightforward, but the robot was a champ and we actually beat our personal bests in several ways,” Schmidt said in an email. Icefin completed its two longest trips ever, venturing over a mile out from the borehole. “We actually got to the end of our tether on our second dive out there,” Schmidt wrote.</p><p>Within a matter of days, the ITGC researchers receive their first readings.</p><p>The water beneath the borehole is about 160 feet deep. The top half of it is cold water, a few degrees above freezing, and the lower half is warmer, saltier water, Basinski finds. Based on this even splitting, it would seem that turbulence—the rapid mixing of warm and cold water—is low. That means the warm water isn’t readily able to heat up the cold water above it, which could be good news for Thwaites.</p><p>But the researchers aren’t celebrating yet.</p><p>We can’t ignore the fact that this warm water is there and touching the ice, Basinski says. This warm water, she adds, is from our active heating of the atmosphere. When the atmosphere warms, wind patterns change, which ultimately affects the shape of ocean currents. Scientists already know that changing currents, which now shepherd warm water to Greenland, are to blame for much of glacial melting in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. The same might be happening in the South at Thwaites, they fear.</p><p>And, Holland adds, not all of Thwaites behaves the same: Under its heavily-crevassed, quick-moving western tongue, it’s very possible that warm and cold water are mixing. </p>
            <figure class="richtext-image full-width"><img alt="Aurora_David.jpg" class="richtext-image full-width" height="450" width="800"
            src="/wgbh/nova/media/images/Aurora_David.width-800.jpg"/><figcaption><p>Aurora Basinski and David Holland depart from West Antarctica. Image Credit: David Holland and Aurora Basinski</p><div class="credit"></div></figcaption>
            </figure>
            <p>Now that the ITGC researchers have returned home, they’ll pore over more data, much of which is being beamed to them by tools they’ve left on the ice. Some team members plan to return to Thwaites next year or the following, or will visit for the first time. Some, like Basinski, don’t wish to return at all. “Antarctica is a lot of fun. But [returning there] would mean a lot of digging,” she says, referring to unearthing tools from a year’s worth of snow —about 10 feet.</p><p>With the information they collect over the five years of the ITGC, they hope to map out the glacier in detail. </p><p>“By doing that, we help understand what the linch pins are in the system,” Schmidt wrote in an email. “We know from a whole host of data that the climate is warming, that the ocean is warming and that Thwaites is changing rapidly, but the rates of change under the ice are uncertain without these new data.”</p><p>These data “will help beat down the uncertainty in how the system is changing,” she wrote. And that will allow scientists to make better climate predictions and society to properly respond.</p><p>Thwaites has the power to rapidly split and shed, to raise the seas, to inundate coastal cities. “The future of our planet’s sea level is tied up almost certainly with what I’m standing on and what the folks behind me are working on,” Holland said from the glacier in January, gesturing to Schmidt’s team and Icefin behind him. “The impact, around the world, will be on tens or hundreds of millions of people. And the impact in dollars is huge.” </p><p>For now, that impact comes with uncertainty. And that uncertainty is hinged on the amount of carbon dioxide we emit into the air now and moving forward, says climate scientist Andra Garner. It can feel dire, she says, but the future of Thwaites and our planet is largely in humans’ hands. “That’s our source of hope,” she says, “that we have the chance to change things.”</p><p></p></div>
  

  
      

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      <div class="rich-text"><p><i>NOVA science correspondent Miles O&#x27;Brien assisted in reporting this article.</i></p><p></p><p><i>Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that underneath Thwaites Glacier, a layer of warm water is sitting above colder water. Cold water is in fact above the warm water.</i></p></div>
  



<p>Thwaites Glacier is melting fast. But to understand how climate change is driving its decline, scientists need to send instruments through 2,000 feet of ice into the water below.</p>

Scientists find warm water beneath Antarctica’s most at-risk glacier





  
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  Editor’s Note: This article was
 </i>
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   originally published
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<p>
 On the evening of Saturday, August 11, lightning struck nine miles north of West Glacier, Montana and hit Glacier National Park’s Howe Ridge. A fire began.
</p>
<p>
 By the following day, the Howe Ridge Fire began to expand rapidly, with windy and dry conditions acting as the perfect fuel.
</p>
<p>
 As the fire grew, officials closed surrounding roads and issued an evacuation order for nearby campgrounds as well as Lake McDonald Lodge and North Lake McDonald Road, due east of the fire’s point of origin,
 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/maps.htm">
  reports the National Park Service
 </a>
 . Management crews plan to establish point protection around structures and evaluate the areas in which they can construct control lines, but they face a major concern: Uneven terrain and the risk of falling trees prevent crews from safely establishing a direct fire line, the Park Service reports. About 250 personnel are assigned to the four fires burning within Glacier National Park, according to its Howe Ridge Fire hotline. Crew members assigned to Howe Ridge are using fire engines or taking to the sky in CL-215 ‘Superscooper’ airplanes and a K-Max helicopter to control the inferno, which currently spans about 3,500 acres.
</p>
<p>
 The Howe Ridge Fire’s estimated containment date, reads its
 <a href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6135/">
  InciWeb
 </a>
 (Incident Information System) page, is approximately 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, November 1. But unfortunately, the embers could affect the landscape even after its last plume of smoke is distinguished, Jason Kean a U.S. Geological Survey research hydrologist who works with USGS’ Landslide Hazards Program, warns. Usually attributed to interactions between heavy rains, loose bedrock and gravity, landslides can be an all-too-real consequence of forest fires.
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 “You can look on Google Earth and see these scars from shallow landscapes all around,” he says.
</p>
<p>
 Fire primes a landscape for a slide in a few ways. When a fire strikes, some trees––sometimes many––are felled. The vegetation is like a “blanket on the soil,” Kean explains, with trees functioning as an anchor, securing soils in place. “When you remove the vegetation, raindrops can directly hit the soil and make those particles move.”
</p>
<p>
 But fire also chars the earth, transforming the hydrology, or water content, of its soil. As the soil burns, precipitation is less able to penetrate below the soil’s surface level. The ground’s surface could become unstable, and instability is a key ingredient for a landslide. Thanks to gravity, soil on a slope is most at risk.
</p>
<p>
 Most of Glacier National Park’s precipitation falls as snow, the National Park Service’s National Parks Fire Programs Coordinator Richard Schwab explains, but the Park is also home to powerful thunderstorms––the very cause of the Howe Ridge Fire. “It’s the summer thunderstorms that can trigger the kind of event that we’re concerned about,” Schwab says.
</p>
<p>
 “Particularly right after the fire, when the earth doesn’t have that blanket of vegetation, an intense storm can cause a real problem,” Kean adds. “Then in the spring, if you were to get rain on top of snow, the rain could melt the snow and essentially cause double the amount of water.”
</p>
<p>
 In the first year or two after the fire, the roots of trees it destroyed will still be intact, effectively creating support for the soil. But in time, the tree roots start to decay, and a shallow landslide–– one where the surface layers of soil slough off––can occur. Surface landslides can occur up to 10 years after a fire, Kean warns.
</p>
<p>
 Already, the Howe Ridge Fire has destroyed numerous private summer residences, park-owned boathouses, a camp house and its outbuildings. Tourists are being encouraged to stay on Glacier’s east side. Throughout Tuesday night, fire management crews heard noises that resembled gunfire, Montana’s
 <a href="https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2018/08/15/falling-trees-sound-like-gunshots-glacier-park-fire/999214002/">
  <i>
   Great Falls Tribune
  </i>
 </a>
 reports––sounds made by trees collapsing to the ground.
</p>
<p>
 When rain finally falls again upon Howe Ridge, having fewer trees could cause its terrain to more readily slurp up moisture.
</p>
<p>
 Working with the
 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/maps.htm">
  NPS’ Burned Area Emergency Response
 </a>
 and other fire response teams, the USGS will conduct a debris-flow hazard assessment for the region scorched by the Howe Ridge Fire. This assessment entails using satellite imagery to generate a map of the burned area, finding the slope of the terrain within that area, and applying rainstorm models that are low, moderate, and severe in intensity to gauge the range of potential for a landslide, among “a whole suite” of other conditions, Schwab says, including at-risk “critical cultural resources, erosion, natural resources, invasive species and endangered species.”
</p>
<p>
 The Howe Ridge assessment will have to wait until its fire gets close to containment, USGS researchers say, but last year, the
 <a href="https://landslides.usgs.gov/hazards/postfire_debrisflow/detail.php?objectid=147">
  Sprague Fire
 </a>
 , which burned on the other side of Lake McDonald from the Howe Ridge Fire, was one of 96 different fires across the country that the USGS conducted an assessment for in 2017.
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 “Fortunately, that fire didn’t become problematic, unlike the others I’ve worked on,” Schwab, who’s currently stationed at California’s nearly 200,000-acre Carr Fire, says of the Sprague. He cautiously adds: “The Sprague fire has the potential to create a problem if you get the right rain event.”
</p>
<p>
 Responsible for the deaths of
 <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/body-mother-found-after-california-mudslide-death-toll-rises-21-n839546">
  21 people
 </a>
 , California’s 2017 Thomas Fire caused some of the worst debris flows that Kean had ever seen. “People need to plan for these events as soon as possible,” he says.
</p>
<p>
 The intensity of the Thomas Fire’s landslides makes Kean worry about the repercussions of California’s Mendocino Complex Fire––the state’s largest in recorded history––most. But he stresses that landslides are a very real repercussion within Montana’s Glacier National Park, too.
</p>
<p>
 “It’s definitely a possibility,” he says of landslides occurring as a result of the Howe Ridge Fire. “In 2003 and 2006, there were a bunch of debris flows that were associated with fires that aren’t too far from Howe Ridge. When you have intense slopes like these, there’s always the possibility."
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 Photo credit: NPS Photo
</p></div>
  



<p>Embers from the Howe Ridge Fire could affect the landscape even after its last plume of smoke is distinguished.</p>

A Fuming Glacier National Park Faces Long-Term Consequences





  
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  <i>
   originally published
  </i>
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 <i>
  in an edition of NOVA’s email newsletter, NOVA Lens, and has now been repurposed for NOVA Next. Sign up for NOVA Lens
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<p>
 During his time in the trenches of World War I, Dr. Lawrence Bruce Robertson, a Canadian surgeon who pioneered methods for blood transfusion, watched three men die of ruptured blood cells, multi-organ damage, and eventual organ failure—symptoms of a condition called paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH).
</p>
<p>
 It was a time before scientists had identified the four major blood types in humans: A, B, AB, and O. The men Robertson had seen die had passed away due to a violent reaction to the blood they were given, which was incompatible with their own blood type.
</p>
<p>
 We now know that type O blood, which is a recessive trait, is the “universal donor.” If a blood transfusion is necessary, those with type O blood must receive type O blood; on the contrary, type O can be safely administered to all blood types. Now, in
 <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2018/august/gut-bacteria-provide-key-to-making-universal-blood-video.html?_ga=2.73840727.473629983.1535079314-891657040.1535079314">
  a new study
 </a>
 , researchers report that they used newly discovered gut bacteria enzymes to convert type A blood to type O at a rate faster than ever before. Omnipresent blood shortages could soon be no more.
</p>
<p>
 “What we’d be able to do, if this passes all the safety regulations, is to expand that reserve of available blood,” said Dr. Steve Withers, a professor of biochemistry at the University of British Columbia and the senior author of the new study, which he presented at the
 <a href="https://global.acs.org/events/256th-acs-national-meeting-exposition/">
  American Chemical Society National Meeting
 </a>
 in Boston on Tuesday.
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      <div class="rich-text"><p>
 First developed by the late Jack Goldstein of the New York Blood Center, the idea of
 <a href="https://www.nysun.com/national/scientists-convert-blood-to-type-that-can-be/51631/">
  converting type A, B, or AB blood to O
 </a>
 has been around for a while, explains Chief Scientist of the Canadian Blood Services Dr. Dana Devine, who was not involved in the new study. The challenge, she adds, has been how to commercialize it.
</p>
<p>
 “He’s got an enzyme that’s way more active and you can use less of it,” Devine said of Withers. “He may have the breakthrough to get over the cost hurdle,” she adds, referring to older methods with price tags that prevented them from becoming marketable.
</p>
<p>
 Some enzymes from bacteria that can be cultured in a lab––of which there are about 10,000, Withers points out––can be used to cut off the antigens, or small sugar or protein molecules, from type A or type B blood, effectively turning it to type O. (If an enzyme that feeds on type A antigens is paired with one that feeds on type B antigens, type AB blood can be converted to O.) In
 <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja5116088">
  a 2015 study
 </a>
 , published in the
 <i>
  Journal of the American Chemical Society
 </i>
 , Withers and his team found an enzyme that was capable of very slowly munching on type A antigens. Manipulating evolution, the researchers tweaked the enzyme, improving its ability to remove the sugar molecules by 170-fold.
</p>
<p>
 But Withers, an enzymologist with 35 years of experience, suspected that nature––specifically the human gut––had an even greater solution.
</p>
<p>
 “The human gut contains the A and B antigens,” he said. “It would make sense that bacteria would evolve to clip them off.”
</p>
<p>
 To see if this was the case, Withers and his team partnered with Dr. Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu, a pathologist at the Centre of Blood Research, and Withers’ University of British Columbia colleague Dr. Steven Hallam, a microbiologist and immunologist whose lab specializes in metagenomics, the study of genetic materials recovered directly from nature as opposed to those produced in a lab.
</p>
<p>
 Microbes are shaping the Earth’s environment and its other organisms, Hallam said, and there are far more of them than neurons and stars in the universe. “People are becoming more interested in tapping into that massive diversity of life, which creates an opportunity to discover enzymes and catalysts to solve worldwide problems,” he explains.
</p>
<p>
 With the support of Hallam’s lab, Withers’ team sifted through human feces to extract their bacterial DNA, then chopped the DNA into very large chunks, which on average contain 20 to 30 genes. They inserted those genes into an infamous host that’s easily cultivated in the lab—
 <i>
  E. coli
 </i>
 . “And then,” Withers said with a small chuckle, “we basically crossed our fingers and hoped these genes could be encoded.”
</p>
<p>
 It worked. The gut enzymes were even more efficient than those the team developed three years ago.
</p>
<p>
 The potential significance for society is profound, Devine said. “It would allow blood systems to do a much better job of managing their industry. They’re always struggling to get enough O blood––O donors––in the door,” she said of blood drives.
</p>
<p>
 In the event of an emergency transfusion, doctors automatically administer type O blood to a patient; taking time to conduct a screening could be life-threatening. Appeals for type O donors are therefore high, particularly in the summer months. “People start going on vacation and the general blood supply starts to drop,” Devine says. “Sometimes, you get increases in demand with people traveling. More traffic causes more accidents. It all lines up in the wrong way.”
</p>
<p>
 The new research is still in its preliminary stages. Through collaborating with the CDC and Canadian Blood Services, the team will have to perform further in vitro testing to determine whether blood converted from type A to O using gut microbe enzymes––which researchers would remove from the blood before administering it–– could cause abnormal reactions in patients. But if it passes safety studies, including a Phase 3 clinical trial in, the societal significance would be tremendous.
</p>
<p>
 “As scientists, we don’t often get the opportunity to make discoveries that make such a large human impact in the world. It’s rare. It’s a glorious thing. The idea of being able to take any kind of blood and transform it into any form would have a major health impact. It would literally save lives. And turning to the human body to find that solution is very elegant,” Hallam says. “It’s just beginning.”
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 Photo credit: @tOrange.biz 2004-2018 / (CC-BY 4.0)
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<p>In a new study, researchers report that they used newly discovered gut bacteria enzymes to convert type A blood to type O at a rate faster than ever before. Omnipresent blood shortages could soon be no more.</p>

Sukee Bennett

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