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May 28, 2025—A bold new plan to refreeze polar ice. Plus, the science of The Last of Us, and the latest SpaceX test flight. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | A prototype antenna for the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) radio telescope in New Mexico. National Science Foundation/National Radio Astronomy Observatory | | A pump, powered by batteries, pours seawater from under the ice onto the surface, where it floods snow and makes new ice, thickening the sheet so it will last longer in the coming summer's sun.Taylor Roades | | A U.K. company called Real Ice is trying a bold tactic to refreeze melting ice in the Arctic. Their researchers have been pumping up water from beneath the ice and spraying it on top of the ice where it quickly refreezes, thickening the ice in that location. In one test site the team measured the ice after using their experimental technique—the ice was 152 centimeters thick. They had successfully added almost 30 centimeters of ice compared with untouched sites they measured. Real Ice is trying to thicken seasonal ice (ice that shrinks during summer) so it lasts longer into the warm months, keeping the planet cool. Someday, the company hopes to refreeze a million square kilometers of both seasonal and multiyear ice—an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined. All they'd need, representatives say, is 500,000 ice-making robots. | | Why this matters: The last winter in the Arctic was the mildest in 75 years. The sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean was at its smallest extent on record. Scientists predict that within the next 15 years this ice cap will disappear in summer for the first time in millennia, accelerating global warming: The ice acts like a giant mirror, reflecting up to 90 percent of the sun's radiation back toward space. Ocean water, in contrast, absorbs 90 percent of sunlight. As more ice melts, more ocean water is exposed, and that water warms further, melting even more ice. If the ice starts disappearing entirely in summer, global temperatures could rise an extra 0.19 degree C by 2050. Several geoengineering projects around the world are attempting to mitigate the effects of global warming, some using aerosolized particles to block the sun, and others attempting to shade or refreeze the ice. What's the catch: The cost of Real Ice's hoped-for half a million drones to thicken one million kilometers of sea ice would likely be close to $10 billion, not to mention the energy costs of employing the drones. In October 2024 a paper by 42 top glaciologists condemned ice thickening and other polar geoengineering techniques as dangerous and unfeasible. But perhaps the biggest concern is that geoengineering fixes are "making decarbonization a lot less attractive," according to glaciologist Heidi Sevestre. These technological solutions don't "attack the cause of the issue, the fossil fuels," she says. University of Alaska Fairbanks marine biologist Brendan Kelly, a former White House science adviser, worries that geoengineering could be "hijacked" by oil or tech companies as an excuse to continue business as usual. | | - Though it created a cultural fascination with sharks, the movie Jaws, which will turn 50-years-old in June, launched misconceptions about shark behavior, writes Chris Pepin-Neff, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Sydney in Australia. The original 1974 novel and the film "provided the justification for, and weakened pushback against, all the antishark public policies that followed, including revenge shark hunts, shark derbies, changes to fishery laws that classified sharks as waste fish, delays in enacting shark conservation and the placement of lethal shark nets on some of the world's beaches." | 4 min read
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- The physics of frilly Swiss cheese, called Tête de Moine. | Ars Technica
- Indigenous women in India have created "dream maps" of the ideal state of their local villages, which they show to government officials to seek protection against climate change. | Associated Press
- Some 60,000 years ago, bed bugs ditched their bat hosts and tagged along with Neandertals. | SciTechDaily
| | Geoengineering projects to counter climate change are something of a hot-button issue among scientists. They are costly and have unforeseen ecological impacts, experts say, not to mention they are by no means quick fixes: to achieve international climate goals such projects would need to be maintained for decades. All that said, I can understand why private companies and science labs pursue such projects. Without urgent government action to curb emissions (ahem, U.S.), global temperatures are rising faster than predicted. It's an all-hands-to-the-pump situation. | | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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