November 20, 2023: I'm back! Today we're tracing the source of volcanoes on Jupiter's moon, how the pandemic affected teen brains and SpaceX's second launch ends in "unscheduled disassembly." —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Io, the innermost moon of Jupiter, is the most volcanic object in the known universe. The source of those lava-spewing calderas on its surface is concentrated closer to the crust, rather than great geologic depths, according to a new study. By examining an extensive map of infrared images of the moon's volcanic hotspots, researchers observed considerably more volcanic heat coming from Io's lower latitudes and equatorial expanses, while its poles are comparatively lukewarm. Deeper tidal heating within the moon would create profuse volcanism at the poles, whereas shallower baking would kindle volcanic fires at lower latitudes, as the researchers found.
Why this matters: Solving the mystery of what fuels Io's volcanic activity could help reveal how another Jovian moon–Europa– and other icy moons manage to harbor vast, potentially habitable liquid-water oceans despite the outer solar system's sunlight-starved chill.
What the experts say: The finding isn't completely clear-cut: The poles are also volcanically active, which implies a modicum of tidal heating is occurring at depth. "There's probably some degree of melting happening everywhere," says Katherine de Kleer, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology. | | | A composite view of Io from instruments aboard NASA's Juno probe. The spacecraft's JunoCam captured the Jovian moon's blotchy, colorful surface; the red, yellow and white regions are infrared hotspots and pinpoint sites of active volcanism. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM | | | This news item was mentioned on Friday, but I think it deserves a closer look: The teenage brain showed signs of accelerated aging during pandemic stay-at-home orders, according to preliminary research findings presented at a conference in Washington, D.C., last week. Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington reported a larger-than-normal thinning of the cerebral cortex in a group of 124 adolescents who had been tracked before the pandemic at ages nine to 17 and then again after the COVID lockdown period. The cortex normally gets thinner as an adolescent grows, but the model showed a sped-up pattern of thinning during the pandemic.
Why this matters: Thinning of the cortex can be a sign of stress. It can affect neuroplasticity, the ability to learn new things. The researchers are still trying to determine whether plasticity was affected in the group study.
What else: Another study of more than 1,400 teens showed that less robust neural connections in some brain networks foretold greater levels of reported sadness and other stresses when these measurements were made in 2020 and 2021 (the two principal years of the pandemic). | | | • SpaceX's giant Starship rocket launched on Saturday and exploded eight minutes later. The FAA will supervise an investigation into the cause of the explosion. | 3 min read | | | • The state of the planet in 10 numbers (example: 66,000 square kilometers of total deforestation worldwide in 2022). | 10 min read | | | • A single squirrel can bury up to 3,000 nuts in a season. But can they remember where they put them all? | 7 min read | | | • The view of nature and animals only in terms of the economic services they provide has been coined the "Capitalocene," and it reduces nature to a monetizable commodity. This oversimplified way of thinking ignores the complexity of nature and ecosystems, write Chirag Dhara and Vandana Singh, environmental scientists at Krea University, India, and Framingham State University, respectively. "The essential task today is to internalize this truth and to realign our values and the economy with it, before we irreversibly push Earth into a state less congenial to life," they say. | 5 min read | | | I'm happy to be back in your inboxes today! As my fantastic sub Robin Lloyd told you, last week we launched a special report on the modernization of America's nuclear arsenal, as part of our December issue. We'll keep diving into that vital content as the month progresses, so let me know what you think so far. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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