September 13, 2024: We're covering an unidentified seismic object, kidney stones in space, and Elon Musk's second-place successes. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | Dickson Fjord before (August 2023) (left) and after (September 2023) (right) the landslide. Søren Rysgaard (left); Danish Army (right) | | | Unidentified Seismic Object | A nine-day monotonous hum detected last year, initially considered an "unidentified seismic object," was found to originate from a skyscraper-sized tsunami that itself was triggered by a landslide in Greenland, write seismologist Stephen Hicks and geologist Kristian Svennevig. The 200-meter-high tsunami occurred after a volume of rock and ice big enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools slid down a steep, climate-thinned glacier and fell into the country's remote, narrow Dickson Fjord. The resulting wave, called a seiche, sloshed back and forth about 10,000 times over the nine-day period, yielding the single-frequency hum.
Why this matters: No one directly saw the massive landslide-tsunami. The new finding raises questions about existing tools and theories that shape how scientists monitor Earth's processes. These approaches are losing their usefulness in the context of once-unthinkable events resulting from the impacts of global warming.
What the experts say: "We had no standard workflow to analyze [the] 2023 Greenland event. We also must adopt a new mindset because our current understanding is shaped by a now near-extinct, previously stable climate," write Hicks and Svennevig, part of the team that discovered the source of the nine-day hum. | | | Astronauts have high rates of kidney stones, those calcium and salt accretions that can form in kidneys—and sometimes cause piercing pain—when their blood-filtering work goes awry. Microgravity and galactic cosmic radiation are to blame for this problem, according to new research covered by applied mathematics Ph.D. candidate Max Springer. Microgravity can stiffen and shrink the organs' tubules, which ordinarily dial up and down our salt and mineral levels in blood. Those outcomes can weaken the tubules or hinder their work. High-energy radiation delivers a second punch to tubules, potentially damaging their DNA, proteins and cellular components. The radiation effects can be permanent. Why it matters: Scientists have studied Mars so intently in the past few decades that some researchers say we understand the fourth rock from the sun better than our own oceans. And plenty of groundwork has been laid for human missions to Mars in the 2030s. (That said, an editor at Defector this week laid out an argument against the feasibility of human colonies at Mars.)
What the experts say: "We are restless explorers; there's no question we're going [to Mars]. But most people don't think of the needed health research to make it possible," says kidney physiologist Matthew Bailey. | | | Microscopic calcium oxalate crystals on a kidney stone. David Scharf/Science Source | | | • The world's richest man, Elon Musk, is lauded widely as an innovator. But two of his biggest successes, SpaceX and Tesla, have involved launching versions of products that were invented by others and not the first of their kind, writes Scientific American editor Dan Vergano. These Musk ventures also have benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in government loans. | 5 min read | | | • Do you know the answer to the first question of today's science quiz? Also, don't miss today's Spellements, and if you spot any science words that are missing from the puzzle, email them to games@sciam.com. This week, readers Alan and Amir both found telepath. Nice work, all! | | | MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • A new quantum Cheshire Cat thought experiment is out of the box. | 8 min read | • New painkiller could bring relief to millions—without addiction risk. | 15 min read | • Scientists make living mice's skin transparent by harnessing a simple food dye (Yellow No. 5). | 5 min read | • Brain scientists finally discover the glue that makes memories stick for a lifetime. | 6 min read | | | • Insights into the neurobiology of love have derived from researchers' manipulating gene activity and watching neuron activity in prairie voles, small mammals that form "pair bonds" that can be life-long. The mechanism behind pair-bonding is related to the distribution of hormone receptors in the brain's more ancient structures, write neuroscientist Steven Phelps and colleagues. | 12 min read | | | We are delighted and proud at Scientific American to have published a story by Shi En Kim about a coin-flip bias finding that this week won an Ig Nobel Award. The "Igs" are given out annually to celebrate 10 scientific findings that make you laugh and then think, according to the Annals of Improbable Research magazine site (AIR organizes the Igs). One of this year's lauded findings blows away the rest: a discovery that mice, rats and pigs essentially can breathe through their anuses. Read more at The Guardian.
| —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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