Science Friday - A Week Of Milestones For Spaceflight | Mexico Has Elected A Scientist President

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

A Week Of Milestones For SpaceflightThis has been a week of milestones for human spaceflight. After years of delays, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully launched Wednesday on the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. On Thursday, it docked with the International Space Station.Also on Thursday, SpaceX’s Starship rocket made its first successful launch and reentry after three previous attempts (the massive rocket burned up in the atmosphere on the last launch). And on a more sobering note, NASA announced that its famous 34-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is experiencing issues with its gyroscopes and is opting to only use one for the time being. The agency says Hubble can still do science, but less efficiently than it once could.Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, joins Ira to discuss those and other top stories in science this week, including why the viral Joro spider you may have seen online does not pose a threat to humans, how a virus that’s spreading due to deforestation in South America could overwhelm local healthcare, and why the FDA voted against the medical use of MDMA.Mexico Has Elected A Scientist President. What Will That Mean?This week, Mexico elected a historic president: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who will be the first woman to lead the nation, and was also an environmental engineer before entering politics.Despite the president-elect’s scientific past, Sheinbaum Pardo has committed to following the lead of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose science policies were deeply unpopular with many researchers in the country.Mexico’s scientific community is split on how this election will impact science and research in the country. Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, a reporter at Science Magazine, joins Ira to talk through the complexities of this election and how scientists are reacting.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Mexico's new president is a scientist. What impact will that have on the country? A lot of people are hoping that because she's a former scientist, she will support science, but also she has given all the signs that she will continue the projects of this administration. It's Friday, June 7th, and Strappen, because it's another beautiful Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Kathleen Davis. Claudia Shinebaum Pardo won Mexico's project.

presidential election this week, making her the first woman to lead the nation. She also used to be an environmental engineer before she entered politics. Mexico scientists are split on whether or not she'll make positive environmental changes, considering her alignment with an administration that many call anti-science. We'll talk about the nuances of that election in just a bit, but first, Ira talks to Maggie Kerth about the biggest science stories of the week. There was a big week of milestones for space flight. We saw successful notable launches from both Boeing and SpaceX within a day of each other. So what does this all say about this current moment and about the future of space travel? Here to tell us about those launches and other science news from this week is Maggie Kerth,

science writer and a tutorial lead for a carbon plan. Maggie, always good to have you. Thank you so much. Always good to be here. Let's start with this Boeing Starliner launch, because after years of delay, the crew launch to the International Space Station finally happened, but not without a little drama, right? Right. I mean, that's really been the theme of space news this week is a little positive, and also things are kind of janky at the same time. So this was a flight that was originally supposed to happen back in 2017, and the two astronauts are now safely on board the ISS, despite some technical troubles, which included helium leaking from the system that helps

pressurize the capsule's thrusters. As of Thursday, CNN was reporting that most of the leaks have been patched up and none of this posed any safety problems for the crew. That's good to hear. And I know SpaceX, as I say, their Starship, they had a launch also, but that was pretty significant too, right? It was. So SpaceX had its own win this week. It ran a successful launch and return of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket for the very first time. Three earlier test launches had ended in destruction as Starship lost control or broke apart. At this time, though, SpaceX was able to launch it, separate the ship from the reusable rocket booster, and land both of them safely, albeit with some reentry damage to the ship. All right.

Sticking with space, let's move to the sun a bit, okay? we've got some hot sun news starting with this amazing video that NASA captured of a failed solar flare. It was like, whoop, never mind. Tell us about that. Oh, my gosh. It was just very cool. You've got this giant massive solar flare erupting from the sun, only to watch most of that material get sucked right back into the sun's gravity. And this is happening in the context of a really interesting time period that we are in.

in because right now the sun is at a peak of activity and it's 11-year cycle. And that peak is turning out to be way more active than anyone had predicted it would be. So this is why you got that massive aurora light show back in May, which I got to go see and it was incredibly cool. Lucky you. I know. I'm very pleased with myself. But these auroras are caused by these bursts of charged particles. They get ejected from the sun, they travel through space, they crash into our atmosphere, and they emit these colored lights with every collision. So the storm of particles that struck the Earth in May was the biggest since 2003. And researchers told science news that more storms like this could happen through the end of the year and maybe even into the early months of 2025. Wow. And this solar

ejection was kind of part of that ongoing activity. But it also kind of demonstrated. It also kind of demonstrates how hard it is to predict which of these solar ejections are going to turn into intense ores until they're already speeding towards Earth. Let's move on to some early human news this week, starting with a discovery of how the woolly rhinoceros went extinct 10,000 years ago. Now, there's something to talk about. Yeah. So this is a beast that could grow to more than six and a half feet tall. It had a three-foot-long horn, but they went extinct after the last ice age. And many scientists had believed that those rhinos were a victim of climate change. But it turns out there's reason to think their demise was

more complicated than that. Researchers from Australia's University of Adelaide ran a computer model with both climate and likely points of human rhino contact kind of added in. And over the course of tens of thousands of iterations, they found one that matched what we know from archaeological and DNA evidence and basically came to the conclusion that the rhinos demise was the result of both climate change and human hunters. Wow. Hunting. Who would have thunk that? Obviously, they did. Yeah. Well, and it's also, it's also something that has come up, We know that humans had a lot of responsibility for the demise of the megafauna. Speaking of kind of the same thing, an ancient human body called Atsi the Iceman has been studied for a while,

and the sciences have gotten some new insight on that. Tell us about that. Yeah, so Atsi is Earth's favorite frozen mummy. And back in 2012, scientists had analyzed the Iceman's genome, but there were these oddities in it that didn't make a lot of sense with what we know about things like various population movements from other data. So now it turns out that original study had been contaminated with modern DNA, and they've done a new analysis that removes that, and it's found some really interesting details about Otzi. One of them is male pattern baldness, but also, it turns out, Otzi was not a white guy. The skin on that mummy is dark, but scientists had always chalked that up to the effects of being frozen in ice for more than 5,000

years. This genetic evidence, however, says he was just always brown. And that makes sense with other recent research that suggests the genes for pale skin tones did not become prevalent in Europe until somewhere between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago. Boy, that is very interesting. Speaking of interesting, there was an interesting story this week about a town in California that decided not to move ahead with a controversial geoengineering plan. Tell us about that. Yeah, so back in March, researchers from the University of Washington began testing this device that was meant to spray liquidified salt in a fine cloud of particles off the deck of a retired aircraft carrier. The researchers hope to find out whether spraying this salt solution into the clouds has the potential to make clouds brighter, reflecting sunlight away from the surface of the earth, and counteracting climate change with cooling. It was basically meant to see whether the sprayer would still work regardless of the weather,

but the city of Alameda halted that experiment really quickly, and officials voted this week to not allow the experiment to continue at all. So the city of Alameda didn't want to have anything to do with that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there were several reports, including one produced by the city itself that found the experiment was not dangerous. But the city's decision wasn't really about that single experiment. it's part of this ongoing debate about geoengineering research, you know, whether it should happen at all, what the risks are, what role the public should play in deciding when and how it

happens. And if you read quotes from the city officials, that decision to stop the experiment really kind of just sounds like a choice of noping out of those complexities. And some people had issues with how the scientists communicated this, right? Yeah, yeah, there's definitely an element about the science communication here as well. The scientists didn't need permits to do this experiment, so they had not been in contact with the city. But the officials then felt like that was a big lack of transparency, and it contributed to their decision. The mayor told Politico that she actually only learned about the experiment from reading about it in the New York Times. Wow. That's not how you want to learn about something in your own town.

It was probably kind of startling. Yeah. Let's go down to South America because there's an unforeseen health consequence of default. Orostation, is that right? Yeah, or a poochie virus. It's a tropical disease spread by these tiny insects called biting midges. It's usually a fairly mild thing. You get a headache, body pain, nausea, but it can produce some serious side effects like brain inflammation too. Usually, though, nobody gets it outside the Amazon basin. But this year, that is changed and there are cases turning up as far away as Cuba. And scientists are really chalking this up to a combination of factors, including warming climate that's expanding the midges range,

increased human travel in and out of the Amazon basin, and deforestation that's pushing the virus's host animals into cities and towns. It's no surprise, really, that the spread of this virus has been on the rise for about a decade, but scientists are really raising the alarm now because of the way that spread creates these new opportunities for mutation and the potential of overwhelming local health care systems. Yeah, another consequence of defarrowing. that no one thought about in advance. Let's move back to the U.S. for a moment. The FDA this week voted against the medicinal use of MDMA. Tell us about that. Yeah, this FDA advisory panel,

they voted overwhelmingly to not recommend the approval of MDMA as a therapeutic drug, particularly for issues like PTSD. The drug, which is also known as ecstasy, was the backbone of this big recent push to test psychedelics as treatments for mental health disorders. But the panel found that the data submitted to it was weak and didn't demonstrate efficacy or safety. There's a lot of pressure on the FDA right now to approve MDMA for therapeutic use. And that's coming from the public. It's coming from some scientists. But there's really been some issues in this research. There was sexual misconduct by a therapist involved in one of the studies. There were allegations that participants in one of the phase three trials were being pressured not to report negative outcomes.

And the participants could also pretty easily guess whether or not they'd been given the actual drug or the placebo. And that's something that the panel was also concerned could color the results that they and their therapists reported. Wow. Yeah. Finally, we have to clear up this story that's been making the rounds this week in my social media feeds about this very colorful but kind of skis. Gary-looking invasive spider called the Joros spider. It's not as harmful as it looks, right? It is a three-inch-long venomous spider, but experts who have definitely not been paid off by big venomous spider say there's nothing we need to worry about. Well, the real threat lies where? It's an invasive species,

right? That could harm other stuff, but not us. Exactly. This is not a personal risk. Yes. They are freaked out by us. Their venom can't really hurt humans at most. You're talking about a slight itch. But existentially, ejoro spiders do give us plenty to worry about. They're one of these invasive species and they're a highly noticeable one that is drawing attention to the damage these can do to ecosystems, from crops and trees to native animals. Well, Maggie, we're always happy when you invade our ear space. So thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much. Maggie Kerth, Science Writer, an editorial lead for Carbon Plan. You may have seen the headlines from our neighbors to the south this week. Mexico elected and historic president. Claudia Scheinbaum Pardo is the country's first female president and was an environmental engineer before entering politics. But Mexico's scientific community is split on how this election will impact science and research in the country. Here with me to help break down the reaction to this election is my guest, Rodrigo Perez-Ortega,

reporter for Science Magazine based in Mexico City. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira, thanks for having me. You're welcome. As you know, there were lots of headlines here in the U.S. talking about how big of deal this is, this election will be, for science, because Kalalia Scheinbaum is a leftist and a climate scientist. But I understand that things are a bit more complicated than that, right? How do you explain her politics to people outside of Mexico? You're very correct that things are more complicated. So at first phase, Claudio Sheimampardo and this election, you know, it's very progressive. And of course, everybody should say, oh, she's a scientist.

She will help science. But as you said, it's more complicated. So the context comes from this present administration. This president, Andres Manuel Opezzavrador, he's a populist. and he rules this party, Morena, that was funded by him a couple of years ago. And so Claudia Seymound is very close to him, and a lot of people are worried that she is going to continue the attacks on science that he has perpetrated. So let me give you a more context on that. his administration has pursued policies deeply and popular here for scientists, including

cuts to research spending, controversial restructuring of Mexico's main science agency Conacete, and also we call them these mega projects like the Maya train that are very environmentally destructive. So the context here is that we have these progressive new precedent that comes from science. She's a physicist. She did a PhD in environmental engineering. But he's also part of this continuation of, let's call it, one of the most hostile administration for science in the recent decades.

So, yes, the scientific community is very split here in that regard. Right. So they're sort of holding their breath, waiting to see what happens? Exactly. And, you know, she has been very vague on many. things that will happen to science. A lot of people are hoping that, you know, because she's a former scientist, she will support science because she understands how research works, how funding works, you know, all these things that are long term and not just tied to one administration, which is

six years here in Mexico. But also she has given all the signs that she will continue the projects of this administration. One of the contention points is a new science law. So this law was pushed by the current president. We call him AMLO, short for Andres Manuel López Obrador. And this law was very controversial because it was basically centralizes a lot of power into these science agency here that controls most of the budget and the spending on research. So it centralizes all the power, and it's flooded with this ideology of anti-neoliberal science, what they call it, right? So basically, all the science that was done in previous administration. So scientists are very worried that this new science law is steeped with ideology and not really realistic to how

research has been working for so many years here. When I talked to Claudia Schaingbaum, some weeks ago, she was very open to revisiting dialogues with the community. What happened in this administration was that a lot of these changes in regulation and restructuring on the science law, they didn't take the viewpoints of the scientific community. So they want to heal this fracture with this new president, who is a scientist. And I think that's the first step that they're hoping to do is revisit this law. change it basically. Very interesting. I know that Mexico is a big oil and gas country.

How could her election affect policy on that since she has this background? I think that is one of the major points where she is or her proposals are different and also her actions from the current president because this current administration has invested a lot in oil and gas. a refinery. At some point, they used funds dedicated to science and they invested in buying the deer park refinery in Texas, for example, which angered a lot of scientists. But her actions as mayor of Mexico City speak that, you know, she has another agenda for renewable energies. She introduced a lot of electric buses in the city, invested in one of the largest, if not the largest

solar panel plant in Latin America. And when she was a researcher, she was one of the first who introduced the idea or studied the idea of electric vehicles in Mexico City and how would that impact greenhouse gas emissions. So I think that's one of the hopeful changes that, that scientists are waiting from her administration. So you'll be watching it and watching her and the impact on science policy. Definitely. How does a scientist deal with politics now that she's the head of the country? Boy.

It's very interesting. You know, scientists, they were all very silent in the past years, you know, always advocating for more budgets and resources, of course, because so that's one of the changes also in the new law. Previously in the science law, it was established that the country had to spend at least 1% of its GDP in research or science in general. And, you know, known administration had ever reached that level. But with this new science law that was introduced last year, that was gone.

So there was no, you know, even if no president was able to achieve that, now there was no goal, right? So I think with all these changes, scientists, you know, they even protested at some point of all these restructuring of the science agency and budget cuts. So scientists have been very active, or at least a section of them, have been very active in the past six years, loving for science and asking for more, you know, more participation in these decisions. So now there is, there are civil organizations from scientists that are involved in science policy. So I think that's a good thing that hasn't happened before. And I think they, a Nazi scientific community and these groups of scientists will be much more involved, watching what Shane Bampardo is going to be,

and especially in science agency that has been very controversial under this administration. Well, Rodrigo, we're going to depend on you to be our eyes and ears in science in Mexico for us. So I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today. No, thank you. Rodrigo Perez-Artega is a reporter for Science Magazine based in Mexico City. And that's all the time that we have for today. a lot of folks help make the show happen this week, including Annie Niro, Emma Gomez, Charles Bergquist, Danielle Johnson, and many more. On Monday, we'll talk about RNA and the quest to unlock life's greatest mysteries.

But for now, I'm Cy Frye producer Kathleen Davis. Have a great weekend.