Science Friday - Earth’s Core, Govt Data In The Cloud, Book Club. Feb 8, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

At the very center of the Earth is a solid lump of iron and nickel that might be as hot as the surface of the Sun. This solid core is thought to be why our magnetic field is as strong as it is. As the core grows, energy is transferred to the outer core to power the “geodynamo,” the magnetic field that protects our atmosphere and deflects most solar wind. But geophysicists think that the core was originally completely liquid, and at one point between 2 billion and 500 million years ago, transitioned from molten metal to a solid. At that time, our magnetic field was much weaker than it is today, according to new research in Nature Geoscience. The scientists looked at new samples of crystals that first cooled from lava 565 million years ago and found evidence in their magnetic signatures that the core must have solidified at the younger end of the previously predicted range—much more recently than expected. Whether we’re aware of it or not, “the cloud” has changed our lives forever. It’s where we watch movies, share documents, and store passwords. It’s quick, efficient, and we wouldn’t be able to live our fast-paced, internet-connected lives without it. Now, federal agencies are storing much of their data in the cloud. For example, NASA is trying to make 20 petabytes of data available to the public for free. But to do that, they need some help from a commercial cloud provider—a company like Amazon or Microsoft or Google. But will the government’s policy of open data clash with the business model of Silicon Valley? Mariel Borowitz, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech and Katya Abazajian, Open Cities Director with the Sunlight Foundation join guest host John Dankosky to discuss the trade offs to faster, smarter government data in the cloud. The Science Friday Book Club has had three weeks of lively discussion of N.K. Jemisin’s geology-flavored apocalypse, The Fifth Season. Producers Christie Taylor and Johanna Mayer share some of the best listener comments about the story’s science, sociology, and real-world connections—and invite you to add your voice for one final week of literary nerding out. One morning after the next, semi-trailer trucks get off Interstate 70 near Colby in west-central Kansas. They haul parts of giant wind turbines in 150-foot-long sections, the pieces to the Solomon Forks wind farm and the next monumental phase of the Kansas bet on wind energy. The farm will plant 105 turbines in the prairie, each towering 250 feet high. The project is one of a wave of wind farms under construction in Kansas that will add 20 percent more electrical generation to the state’s output. Earlier building surges sprung from tax breaks and from pressure by regulators on utilities to wean themselves off fossil fuels. This time, Fortune 500 companies that are new to the electricity business risk their own money on the straight-up profit potential of prairie breezes. The Solomon Forks project developed by ENGIE North America will crank enough electricity to power more than 50,000 homes. Target and T-Mobile already cut deals to buy hundreds of megawatts from the wind farm. The retailer and cell company will become electricity wholesalers, playing a direct role in generating less-polluting energy and banking that the marketplace can make them money even without the subsidies that drove the industry for decades. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. Ira Flato is away, but he's back next week. It's a state of the union's staple, along with standing ovations, special guests, and statement outfits this year. Americans have come to expect proposals from their president about how he's going to improve their health. And this past Tuesday, President Trump made one. My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic. In the United States, within 10 years, we have made incredible strides, incredible. So stop the spread of HIV in the U.S. by 2030. That's the goal, but what would it take to make this happen? Here to talk about that and other selected short subjects in science is Washington Post Science reporter, Sarah Kaplan.

Welcome to the show. Thanks. Good to be here. So Trump says he wants to eliminate HIV in the U.S. in 10 years. Any details about how this could happen? So there's not a ton on strategy or cost, but what we do know is the ideas that, the CDC and other agencies would focus on a few dozen U.S. counties that are responsible for more than half of all new HIV transmissions in the U.S. There's about 40,000 new cases every year and more than a million people in the U.S. living with HIV. And so the idea is if you can focus on these counties, give people access to the drugs needed to prevent infection, then you can actually lower transmission by a lot. How have AIDS activists, public health folks, people have been watching this for a while, how have they responded? So it sort of raised some eyebrows because, you know, I mean, obviously people are excited about this proposal, but at the same time, shortly after the president took office, he disbanded his HIV AIDS Advisory Council, and he's also taken some policy positions that make it harder for the people most affected by these diseases to access treatment.

And he exposed – sorry, he opposed Medicaid expansion, for example. And, you know, if you're a person who's a person of color or LGBT, you know, it might be harder to get treatment that way. So people are sort of confused about what exactly this means. Any other science in this speech? So there were a few other health subjects. The president talked about his ambition to reduce drug prices, fund childhood cancer. But significantly, there was no mention of a lot of other science. subjects, including climate.

Including climate change. And there's a big news this week in climate change. Yeah. So a day after the State of the Union, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new data showing that climate-induced to natural disasters cost the U.S. nearly $100 billion last year and also 247 lives. So that's an awful lot. It's a big, obviously, there's a lot of impact there.

You've done some reporting in North Carolina. they've seen two big climate disasters in just the last couple of years. What are you learning there? Yeah. So in Southeast North Carolina, where I've been reporting, people had Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and then Florence last year. And this is, you know, in the course of two years, they've had two 500-year floods. So things that are supposedly have a one in 500 chance of happening. But now there's sort of this idea that we're facing a new normal.

2018 was the fourth warmest year on record, and all of the science suggests that severe natural disasters will become more frequent and more destructive as the climate continues to warm. They're happening twice as frequently as they used to. So, you know, people in Lumberton in North Carolina are sort of bracing themselves for the next thing. And again, no real word from the top about what we're going to do about it. Yeah. Well, let's move on to another story we've been following this. week and this one, well this is unusual. It's about our magnetic north pole and it's on the move. What's happening? Yeah, so it's very bizarre. So the magnetic north pole is

different from the geographic north pole, which is, you know, the top point of Earth's access of the ocean. We know where that is. We know where that is. It's not moving. But the magnetic North Pole is reflective of Earth's magnetic field, which is actually generated in Earth's interior. So at the very center in the core is this roiling, tumultuous ball of molten metal, and that conducts an electric current and generates this field. And the field fluctuates, depending on what's happening in the core. And lately it's been fluctuating really unpredictably at this accelerating pace.

It's now moving more than 30 miles per year and sort of zipping towards Siberia. And scientists have to actually update, they had to have this emergency update to the world magnetic model, which they used to sort of mathematically predict where the pole. should be where a compass needle ought to be pointing. They had to have an update a year sooner than planned just because it's moving so fast. But why is it moving so fast? What's happening? So that's the big question, right?

Like clearly something is happening in Earth's interior, but we can't get down there. It's 2,000 miles beneath the surface. So the only thing to do is keep tracking Earth's pole and try to extrapolate from that, you know, what's happening beneath our feet. And we're going to have more later this hour

about how this whole thing works, And it's really fascinating. Very quickly, though, have we fixed our GPS systems? Because that all got messed up by the magnetic North Pole. So actually, unless you're really close to the pole and trying to navigate very precisely, it wouldn't have affected you too much. But, you know, every day that the pole moved and the magnetic model didn't, did create a little bit of discrepancy. So now, you know, cell phone, GPS, and military navigators can be pretty sure they're back on target.

And everything's back on target now because the government's not shut down and they can do all the stuff they need to do, right? Yeah, absolutely. So actually, part of the reason that the magnetic model didn't get updated until this week was because the NOAA scientists who are supposed to host the model were not at work. Okay, I'm going to have to end with a sad story with you here. NASA attempted CPR, so to speak, on its lovely little Mars rover. It's been doing such a great job. Opportunity. What is the status of opportunity right now?

Yeah, so Opportunity got caught in this really dramatic dust storm on Mars, actually last summer, and it hasn't been heard from since. and it's solar-powered, so when dust blocks out the sun, that could be pretty problematic. But it's, you know, even if this is the end, it's a pretty noble way to go for a rover. Opportunity has been on Mars for more than 15 years, which is a record for any spacecraft on the surface of another world. And it's moved 29 miles, which is actually pretty far for a rover. How far was it supposed to go? I mean, it was only supposed to go a couple thousand yards or something. Yeah, it was only supposed to operate for 90 days.

But instead, it's made all of these really amazing discoveries, and most important of which is that it has really found concrete, unambiguous evidence suggesting that Mars had liquid water on the surface early in its history. And that really changes our perception of what kind of world Mars used to be. It's really important in the search for life and trying to understand what happened to this planet to turn it into the kind of desolate desert we know today. So opportunity's got a pretty good legacy, even if it does end soon. And they're trying to reboot it, but they're not feeling confident that they'll be able to bring

it back to life? So, yeah, there's like a couple more kind of last-ditch things that NASA's trying to do, including resetting opportunities clock in hopes that maybe that will wake the rover back up, allow it to get back on schedule with the rising and setting of the sun over Mars. But every day that goes by and they don't hear from opportunity, the chances get lower and lower, unfortunately. I hear you have an obit already written. I don't want to bury the robot too soon, but, you know, we try to be prepared for these things. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter at the Washington Post. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. Kansas is known for wind, especially when it comes to wind power. Wind is closing in on coal as a source of energy in the state. Now nearly 40% of the electricity in Kansas comes from wind.

And there's a new crop of investors, big fortune. 500 companies that are betting on wind power in Kansas. Here to fill us in on that story is Brian Grimmett. He's the Energy and Environment Reporter at KMUW and the Kansas News Service based in Wichita. Brian, welcome to Science Friday. Hey, thanks for having me. So there's this big new wind project called the Solomon Forks Wind Farm. Target and T-Mobile are buying energy directly from this project through something called a virtual purchase power agreement. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, so it's basically a contract. So these corporations decide to by a certain amount of power that's generated at this wind facility at a set price.

What that allows them to do is, so they've purchased this electricity, and then they can sell that into the regional electric grid at whatever the daily price is because the way the regional grid here works is it's a market, and the prices go up and down depending on the needs. And so it's kind of this investment that these companies are making in wind, a chance to make some money. It's a chance to make some money, maybe a chance to lose some money. Why would a company, like, say, Target be interested in becoming an energy wholesom?

sailor? There are a couple reasons. One, it's a good PR move. It allows them to say, I think, for the Solomon Wind Farm Project, that they're going to say that 150 of their stores are going to be powered by the electricity that's

generated from this power purchase agreement. That doesn't mean that the wind is being connected directly into this wind farm, but it does allow them to say that and have that kind of PR vision. And then again, because of the cost to develop Wint has come down so far.

It's a cheap option now, and so it's a good time to make that investment because they can get a good fixed price from these developers. And yeah, there is a risk that the price that they've set isn't what they can sell it for, but they're willing to take that risk. So PR is the big thing, kind of like that Budweiser Super Bowl ad that many of us saw. How is this different from a company buying a renewable energy credit? How is that different? It's a little different because, for one, a lot of times it's cheaper to do it this way.

And the other thing is that renewable energy credits don't necessarily lead to any new wind development. They're buying something that's already there, and it's just kind of a piece of paper. But with this, by doing a virtual power purchase agreement, they're actually helping to make sure that a new wind project is created. And that's important to a lot of these companies, too. They've got these climate goals, sure, and they could do it. that with credits, but they want to make sure that something is actually happening with their investment. And this is one way to make sure that some new construction happens. And the wind companies like this too, right?

Yeah. For the wind companies, they get an assurance that they have a buyer for their electricity. And yeah, it might be at a set price, but that's good for them as they try to get financing to build the thing in the first place. The utility companies, how are they feeling about this? The utility companies are just kind of, they're watching it and seeing how it works. I mean, for them, it's not too big of an impact at this point. It could be in the future. The major utility company here in Kansas, there are several, but the big one is West Star Energy,

and they've actually created their own similar type program. They're allowing big corporations to, they're developing, they're building a wind farm now, and they're allowing corporations to buy parts of that. And instead of doing it on kind of this power purchase agreement, type deal. What they're doing is they're eliminating the fuel cost that these corporations would normally be paying. This is an added tariff based on the price of natural gas or coal, but they'll remove that from people who purchase wind energy and give them a set long-term fixed price. And in the end, a lot of corporations are being able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars doing

it this way. It's very interesting. Brian Grimmett is the Energy and Environment Reporter at KMUW in the Kansas News Service based in Wichita. Brian, thanks so much. much for joining us. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. When we come back, what if government data was faster, smarter, and easier to access, but no longer free? We're going to talk about the challenges of open data in the era of the cloud. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankowski. Whether we're aware of it or not, the cloud has changed our lives forever. It's where we watch movies, share documents, and store passwords. It's quick, it's efficient, and we wouldn't be able to live our fast-paced, internet-connected lives without it.

And now federal agencies are finally catching up with the 21st century and storing much of their data in the cloud too. For example, NASA is trying to make 20 petabytes of data available to the public for free, but to do that, they need some help from a commercial cloud provider, a company like Amazon or Microsoft or Google. But will the government's open data policy clash with the business model of Silicon Valley? And what are the tradeoffs to faster, smarter, easier access to government data in the cloud? Joining me now to talk about this is Mariel Borowitz, assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.

Mariel, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thank you for having me. So let's start off the bat by just getting real clear here. We're not talking about data that needs to be kept secret or private, anything that's classified. So what kind of data are we talking about and who's using it? Sure, so there's all sorts of different types of government data, but a lot of the agencies that are running into this issue first are kind of the science agencies. So groups like NASA that have lots of satellite data, earth observations,

observation data. NOAA collects all sorts of different weather data from satellites and other sources. NIH is collecting a lot of genetic data and other health-related data. So lots of different sources of data, but especially in these science agencies. And stuff that they want people to be able to use that's open for people to use in research of their own. Exactly. So there are many, many users of this data already. With NASA, Earth science, they had over four million users last year accessing their data. So what's prompted these federal agencies to start using the cloud for data storage? It's really out of necessity. So the amount of data that they're collecting has just gotten

to be so large that they can't make it all available with the traditional, you know, just put it on a server and put it up on a website portal. So NOAA, for example, right now, through their online portals, you can only get at about 10% of their data. And they want to make all of the data available. So, you know, you really have to. to move to the cloud to do that. Tell us about some of the benefits to the user for having this data in the cloud. What would be different from the way that maybe they stored it in the past? Sure. So there's a couple of benefits. One, if you, you know, just to actually store this much data, right, to have accessibility to it and make sure you can actually get to all

of it and download whichever part that you want, so you want just some element of it, that's one piece of it. So like I mentioned, you know, with the current system, NOAA can only get 10% of its data out there. There's just too much data to make it all available on a web portal. So one is just access. And then the second piece is analysis. So if you do want to analyze a large part of this data set, you can't just download that onto your own laptop computer and run that analysis. You really need to do that type of analysis in a cloud environment. So tell us more about the government's open data policy. And I don't know, would it be breaking any laws if it didn't make this data free and open to people? If, for instance, they do.

didn't have a cloud solution to get it all up there. I mean, what are the consequences? Sure. So in the U.S., the Obama administration had an open government directive in 2009. That's what started sort of the data.gov movement and an idea of getting all this data up online and available to people. And that's really spread globally. So there's more than 70 countries that have similar initiatives.

And so the agencies, even without the cloud computing capability, they're still abiding by open data. They're making their data freely available. They're not trying to charge for it or make revenue, which is something that had been done in the past. So it will be open, and that's actually one of the tricky things about this move to the cloud environment. It actually doesn't go against kind of the technical rules of being open because the agency itself is not charging for the actual data.

What you would be paying potentially is you'd be paying Amazon, for example, the cost of downloading the data. or the cost of using their cloud analysis product. But in reality, from the user perspective, what you get is a situation where the data you used to work with for free, now you have to pay some type of fee to access that. So that's one of the models. Maybe you could explain this because that's not the only model being explored. There's one that's kind of a fee for service.

You'd pay a little bit of something to the cloud computing system. And there's another model in which it would just be free and open to people to use anywhere. Explain these different models, if you would. Right, absolutely. So the agencies have control over how they set this up, depending on what their budget is and what their capabilities are. So with the pilot program that NOAA is doing right now, for example, it set up the way we just described, where the NOAA data is free from NOAA's perspective, but through the commercial providers they're working with, you would actually pay the commercial providers if you wanted to download the data or analyze it in the cloud. NASA, on the other hand, in their initial program on the cloud, NASA actually covers the cost of the user downloading the data or the user doing some of the cloud analysis. So it's only up to a certain point, right? They can't cover, you know, endless amounts of what people want to do.

But for the most part, for most users, that's a free, continues to be completely free. Do you see that there's a possible impact from how many people are going to try to use the data and whether or not it costs anything? I mean, is there some sort of a limitation there if there's any cost applied? Yes, there is. So if you look historically when we had costs imposed on data, it really did significantly decrease the amount that people accessed and used that data. So one of the examples I like to point to the U.S. has this Lansat satellite system that collects just remote sensing imagery, so imagery of the Earth all around the globe. It was made freely available online in 2008. Before that happened, the largest number of images they ever sold was about 25,000.

Within a couple years, after making the data freely available online, they were distributing about 250,000 images a month. So that's a big difference. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it certainly makes a difference. One of the questions we have is, is why don't these agencies just develop their own cloud systems? It seems as though they're smart enough. They certainly have the technical ability. We wanted to check in with someone from NASA about this.

Kevin Murphy's program executive for Earth Science Data Systems at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and here's what he told us. We have been building out systems which are capable and having the right security policies enabled for people to openly access government products is very difficult. Utilizing these commercial environments of a security enclave within them, which is accessible by anyone, but managed by NASA. So one, it's costly. We don't have. the same size or efficiency as these commercial cloud providers. The second thing is that by moving to these commercial cloud providers, the data becomes more accessible by people who don't have government credentials.

And again, that's Kevin Murphy from NASA. Mariel, maybe you could just respond to that. It sounds as though he lays out a pretty convincing argument for why this might work for NASA. Right. And I think he touched on a lot of the important points here. So there certainly is a debate going back and forth in agencies around the about whether they should build their own sort of cloud system or go with these commercial options. And as Kevin mentioned, some of the benefits of going commercial are, you know, the system's

already out there, so you can just go ahead and start using it right away, which is a benefit in terms of time. But then also those companies have huge workforces, big physical infrastructure that's much larger than anything one agency is ever going to be able to replicate. So they can really take advantage of all of that and make sure they're staying on kind of the cutting edge of that technology. The cutting edge and really provide the type of access that people expect now from cloud computing systems, which are just everywhere. It's what we're used to dealing with in our personal lives. Exactly. I want to bring in another guest. Kacha Abizajian is Open Cities Director with the Open Data nonprofit, the Sunlight Foundation, based in Washington,

D.C., welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for being here. Hi, thank you for having me. So you help cities and local governments develop their own open data policies. I guess I'm wondering what your take is on these sorts of plans. big third party groups to store this really important data? Yeah, so the fundamental belief behind open data policies is that the public has a right to public information and that ultimately citizens are the owners of public data. And so it becomes tricky when you start working with either partnering or contracting with commercial data providers because essentially what you're doing is giving a private

entity control over a public resource. And as we know of Silicon Valley business models, data is an extremely profitable resource for them. And so there's a lot that goes into crafting those agreements. And I think we advocate for agreements that remain transparent and accessible. And that's a huge priority for government staff as they're making these decisions about where to put their data. I mean, we could probably imagine some ourselves, but maybe you could walk me through one or two of the potential pitfalls here. What are the things that you worry that Silicon Valley might do if they control and how is all this data? Sure. Well, there are the basics, like the operational issues that come with partnering with a private entity. And one is just that they have control over how the data

is presented and provided to the public. And they can choose to, you know, charge a fee, of course, in the agreement that they set up with the government, but also they might provide the data in an accessible format. They might make it more difficult for users to use it. So that's on the very basic operational level. But then on a more complicated level, private entities have a stake in analyzing that data and generating insights that will then be profitable or interesting to third parties. And so that's what we're seeing with a lot of private and sensitive data that gets shared on a personal level. And it's not always a risk, but it's something that should be considered as government staff are crafting these agreements, is how is the data going to be reused by the

partner who is also participating in this relationship. We actually, we talked to NASA's Kevin Murphy about crafting these arrangements and how they approach this. Let's take a listen. The use of the cloud, right, and we maintain the ownership of the data in that storage. So what I'd say is that this isn't like a brand new relationship that we're entering into, right? We've been buying storage and we've been buying hardware for a long time.

We look at these commercial cloud entities as other vendors of storage and hardware. and NASA will operate and own everything that it purchases within those environments. So we're trying to make systems which really don't show much difference to the user communities that we currently have. Maybe a better functionality, but NASA will continue to operate, manage, and own everything in them. Gotcha, what do you say to that? How do you respond? Yeah, that question of ownership is a really central one, and I think it's really great that NOAA and NASA both have taken that into account. in crafting their agreements with their partners. It does become more of an issue when you're working with regional or local level governments,

which I do. And there are a wide variety of agencies that go into partnerships that maybe aren't as protective of public data ownership. And so that's an extremely essential point to cover in the agreements. Mariel, I'm wondering if you can talk about how to make sure to preserve that ownership because what we do know as consumers when we're dealing with big cloud entities, it's really hard to know what we own and what the cloud. provider owns. I mean, talk about making sure ownership is clear. Right. So I think the role for this

is really for the agency when they're setting up these agreements to be very clear in terms of, you know, who owns the data, what the commercial entity is allowed to do with the data that in the existing agreements, for example, those entities cannot put licenses on the data that would restrict who can use it, anything like that. So attention to all of those details, to the exact licensing, to the price, all of that is going to be very important. Do you have any concerns that there may be some sort of conflict of interest? I mean, you've got companies like Google that provide these services that are also deeply enmeshed within the economy.

They're doing all sorts of their own science. I guess I'll ask you first, Mariel, and maybe you can follow up, Kachia, but do you have concerns about maybe, say, Google being the stored of this really important data? So I think to the extent that they're working very closely with agencies and you have a very close relationship in terms of making sure the data is usable and following these kind of plans of the agency, I think it's all right. And I'll point out also that these agencies, just like any other user in the United States or in the world, already has access to this data, right?

So it's open data not just to researchers or nonprofits, but also to commercial entities. And so there are cases already separate from these agreements with government where groups like Amazon or Google download the government data just like any other user, user would and then make it available on their platforms as a way to kind of bring people in and get them to use that, use their platform. I'm John Dankowski, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Kachya, I'm wondering, could you pick up on that? Do you have any thoughts?

Yes, I think that I agree that a lot of these agreements do already take into account a lot of the nuance and the licensing that's necessary. And actually, where we see this become more of a conflict is that the local, level where there isn't necessarily as much nuance in the oversight of the agreements and how those agreements are crafted. For example, you have entities like Sidewalk Labs in Toronto and also working in New York that are installing urban tech infrastructure that are collecting data, and they say that they will share open data, but that's a completely different use case.

And so it does become more nuanced, depending on which agency you're talking about. But broadly speaking, I do think that a lot of the details of those. agreements at the federal level are fairly good about protecting the ownership and the rights of the public data. Kachia, I'm wondering if we could loop back with you to the question we had earlier about maybe even the small processing fee that you might have to pay, does that in your mind pass muster with the idea of open data if you have to pay a fee to an Amazon, say, to get any sort of information from NOAA or NASA?

I mean, frankly, no, that's not open data. If you have to pay a fee to access it, then it doesn't become public data anymore. And that is, like I said earlier, one of the absolutely fundamental elements of open data policy is that it's accessible to the public and that it's usable for free. I'm wondering, Mariel, are any of these agencies working together to figure out how to do this? Or is everyone kind of casting off on their own cutting deals with a Google or an Amazon? Or are they working together to try to figure out the best way to solve this big data problem? Sure. So it's a little bit of both. certainly the agencies have their independent programs.

They do have independent negotiations with these companies. There's not just one kind of government negotiation with Amazon, for example. But they are in communication with each other. So certainly NASA and NOAA and NIH, NSF, these agencies, and even internationally, are communicating with each other, not just about how to set up these arrangements, but also how to ensure usability, how to get the word out about how things might be changing.

So there is some communication there. Gotcha, how would this system look different if you could design it? I mean, what would you say is the best possible way to solve the problem of this costing an awful lot of money, making sure that we get data that is open and accessible and is available to people through the cloud? But it does all the protections that you're hoping for. Well, I think that the use cases for each different agency are unique, right? And so there's always going to have to be a certain level of customization and consideration of what we hope that these agencies will do. I mean, we want them to be sophisticated in the analysis that they're able to do.

We want them to have the flexibility to be creative. So we definitely want these partnerships to be able to happen. But at the same time, I think in my view, it would be ideal if the public could have access to the content of these agreements in a way where there could be at least some accountability and oversight into the way that private entities are then sharing the data or publishing it. So the element of public oversight, I think, is really crucial because many of these agreements don't have to be public. proactively. Katya Abizagian is the Open Cities Director with the Sunlight Foundation based in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks also to Mariel Borowitz, assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. She's been writing about this big issue, and I'm really glad you brought it to our attention and that

you could join us today. Thank you, Mariel. Thank you. Thanks also to Kevin Murphy, program executive for Earth Science Data Systems at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for sharing his comments with us. After the break, the Earth's iron and nickel core was once liquid, how geologists are figuring out when that metal started to solidify and what it meant for life on Earth. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankowski. If you learned any geology in grade school, it may have included this picture of the Earth. The rocky crust we walk on, and under that a solid, slowly shifting mantle. Under that, a liquid outer core made of iron and nickel, and at the very center, a solid inner core, also made of iron and nickel, also made of iron and nickel. possibly as hot as the surface of the sun.

But geologists also think that there would have been a time of that inner core was also liquid, when our planet actually formed with a fully molten core. And how they're figuring out when that changed happened, well, it has a lot to do with our magnetic field. New research in nature geosciences tries to put a date on our solid core, suggesting this big change happened relatively recently in geologic time just over 500 million years ago. Dr. Richard Bono is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool

in the United Kingdom. Doctor, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for being here. Hi, thank you for having me. So, first of all, 500 million years is pretty young in geologic terms. Tell us about that. That is young, isn't it? Yes, so Earth is about 4.5 billion years old,

and we've had a magnetic field for what appears to be most of that, certainly 3.5 and maybe as far back as 4.2 billion years. So for the inner core to have formed 500 million years ago, so that's quite recent compared to the age. Yeah, it's recent. So why? Why are you concluding the solid core is so young? So we, in our study, we looked at a few different things.

Our work started with trying to understand the magnetic field itself, which is generated in the liquid part of the core. As the iron swirls and moves, it creates a magnetic field, which we see on Earth. And we looked in particular at the strength of this field. and we found that about 565 million years ago, the field was incredibly weak, about 10 times weaker than it is today.

And then trying to understand the history of this field strength, we found that it, 500 million years ago and going further back, it started out at a strength similar to maybe how it is today, and then it was getting weaker and weaker until it was on the verge of collapsing at that time. And then we combined it was on the verge of collapsing at that time. And then we combined it was getting weaker, this observation with computer simulations about how the magnetic field could be generated

and the core itself and how it would evolve and change to produce this magnetic field. And we found that these computer simulations that predicted a much younger inner core, one that's about 500 million years old, is most consistent with our observations from the geologic rock record. So, and I want to talk about that geologic rock record in a moment, but first I'll tell us, how exactly does a solid core power this magnetic field? So it's in the transition from a liquid core to an inner core. It's growing. And this growth actually changes the chemistry inside the core. And this chemical change, it's a buoyancy. It's like oil and water. And as it flows around, that helps dry.

the magnetic field in the liquid outer part. So it's a chemically powered dynamo as it is today. And do we know how it's solidified exactly what happened? That's still a bit of an open question of exactly what the physics are that allows this inner core to start to grow. Okay, so this all kind of sounds like magic to me because I'm not quite sure how we're looking at the center of the earth 500 million years ago. Explain exactly how you're doing this. So this is one of the exciting parts about this type of research, which is called paleomagnetism. And that's because we get to see the magnetic field on the surface of Earth, but it's being generated much deeper in this outer core. So when a rock forms, there are tiny magnetic grains inside of it, in our case, these little nanometer-sized magnetic needles.

And when the rock cools below a critical temperature, it'll lock in the magnetic field at that time and preserve it. And then we're able to take that rock back to a lab and measure it. It's much like a compass needle. It can tell us both what direction the magnetic field was pointing, but also how strong it is. And that's somewhat unique in that we're able to peer both back in time, but also deep into the earth to where the magnetic field was being formed, even though we're looking at the surface today. Why is it so important that we're able to understand what's going on at the center of the earth, whether it's 500 million years ago or today? So our magnetic field is part of this picture that makes Earth a special planet and one that

has life and an atmosphere and liquid water, because the magnetic field acts as a shield that protects the Earth and its atmosphere from solar radiation. Without this shield, solar radiation, solar wind streaming from the sun can come and strip away the atmosphere and would allow for the water to leave. So this magnetic field in its history and its evolution is directly linked to our ability on Earth for there to be life. So this is critical connection. So it's pretty important. Well, okay, so now let's go back to this time 500 some million years ago when we're looking at this gigantic dip in the magnetic field you were talking about.

You explained that it's one-tenth of the strength it is today. So what could that possibly have done to life on Earth at that time? It's hard to say exactly. We've never seen something that weak in the historical record, where we have direct observations. But if the field was 10 times weaker than it is today, we'd expect that solar radiation would be able to penetrate much further into Earth, into the atmosphere, and that radiation could be harmful to life or to DNA.

And there's been some speculation about what that could mean about how life has evolved and changed in response to this increase in solar radiation. You've discussed, though, the possibility that the magnetic field didn't just dip a lot, that it just completely went away at that time. Is there that possibility? So we don't have any evidence that the magnetic field completely collapsed, or disappeared. It got very weak, but it is still above the minimum amount we would expect just from a sort of background signal. So it never completely disappeared, but it did get much,

much weaker until something changed. And what we think that change was, was that the inner core started to grow. And that allowed the geodynamo to be repowered and to rise back up to what we see today. So what's interesting here is this happened at around this time at which we also see the Cambrian explosion, all this life on earth happening here. Maybe you can explain if there's any sort of correlation here between this dip in the magnetic field and what happened with life on earth at that time. So that's, there's been speculation about that. It's very difficult to try to directly connect something like this, the strength of the magnetic field to evolution. on life, but it is intriguing and that these are happening at about the same time, and it could be a

relation. Before this happened, before this dip that we're talking about here, what was powering the magnetic field of the earth? So it was strong and then it was weak and then it was strong again when the core solidified. What was powering this beforehand? So that's another big question that our discipline is trying to address. There's a lot of uncertainty. But one model is that it's just due to cooling, and that's a thermally powered dynamo.

But this couldn't last forever, and we would expect that as the core continues to cool, there's less power available to drive the magnetic field, and it would get weaker and weaker until it would reach this point of collapse. And that seems somewhat consistent with what we found in our study. Early in the hour, we were talking about the news this week that the magnetic North Pole has actually been moving around a little bit. And it seems very scary to us. What do you see when you look at that? Is that something that concerns you?

Is it something that you can learn anything from? What do you think when you hear that? So I wouldn't be concerned, but I'd be interested. So that's one of the fascinating parts about our magnetic field is that it changes on all these different timescales. As we're seeing in this study about the magnetic North Pole, it moves around on yearly time scales. And it can also change on hundreds to thousands of years. There's this, what's termed the South Atlantic anomaly, a weak point on Earth's field that we're trying to understand if it's hundreds or thousands of years old or even older, going back to

millions and even billions of years. So it's all these different timescales that it's changing at that we're trying to understand how and why and can. and we even predicted that remains a key part of our studies. We just have 30 seconds left. Mars doesn't have a magnetic field? It used to, but it doesn't have one today from the best that we can tell. And what happened? Do we know?

We don't really know. It's this open question. And hopefully some missions that will be looking at trying to collect samples might allow us to gain some insight into the history of Mars and its magnetic field. I love these big open questions, but there's a lot of cool stuff in here. Thanks to Dr. Richard Bono, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Liverpool in the UK. Thanks for joining us on Science Friday. Thank you for having me. Now, you may have noticed that we're talking a lot about geosciences on the program the last few weeks, and there's a reason for that.

Our SciFri Book Club is reading NK. Gemison's the fifth season. It's a story about a world in constant geological turmoil. Volcanoes, earthquakes, even shifting magnetic poles, and we've heard about those. They're all disasters plaguing the story. and one place our book club is meeting is on Facebook. Here to share some gems from that discussion that's happening on Facebook, Science Friday Digital Producer, Yohana Mayer. Yohanna, welcome.

Hey, John. And radio producer, Christy Taylor. Hi there. Hey, John. So when I think book club, I think about people sitting in a room together talking over wine, maybe. How are we doing this on the radio? Well, we kind of can't. I do love the way that we're able to dive into a piece of literature

and really explore it with our guest experts and listeners. But a lot of the time our on-air conversations can only include so many. voices. People don't get to talk to each other. We have limited time and so on. So that is where the Science Friday Book Club Facebook group comes in. We really kind of wanted to try to put that club back in the book club. And people have really delivered some thoughtful conversations as they've been reading. I'm really interested to hear about these conversations because the fifth season has some heavy stuff. I mean, it's end of the world, personal loss, earthquake magic. What kind of questions we've been chewing on? Yes. So for starters, we've been talking about this theme of disaster a lot.

how the society and the story itself has adapted to disaster and also how people respond to it on an individual level. I mean, characters in the story are walking away from their entire lives as they know it because of a giant volcano. So this idea of individual resilience was really intriguing to one of our listeners, Denise from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As a person whose survival instinct is waning during our own times, I find myself wondering what it must be like to have a wish to survive that is so strong that we're, one is prepared to live with brutality or to brutalize others in the name of survival. When hope is lost, what are people living on? What is it like to live with a brain, a mind, a will like that? I'm John Dankosky, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And John, we've also been talking about how groups of people respond to disasters. Yes. So another listener named Jude made a really

interesting comparison between the tight-knit communities in Jemison's world and monasteries in the Middle Ages. Yeah, and she said, so when Roman civilization was breaking up, these institutions really encouraged an ethical approach to communal life. The monks weren't just hanging around praying. They also taught those outside the monastery, the agricultural knowledge and the skills they needed to survive, and they transcribed written material for future preservation. I thought those communities in Jemison's book, in comparison, entirely insular, unwilling to reach out unless they got something in return. So I thought that was a great point about different reactions to disaster and social upheaval.

So social upheaval, I'm guessing people probably had some feelings about how science was portrayed in the story. Well, this is a science show. Yes. We did ask about that. And that's one thing we've really, really wanted to explore with people. The fifth season is a work of fantasy or maybe science fiction, but it's rooted in a lot of real geological turmoil.

There are these characters who can do earthquake magic, but they're also stopping aftershocks. They're trying to plug up volcanoes, but, you know, so the pressure and lava is safely rerouted. They're talking about fault lines and friction and vibrations carrying through different materials, different kinds of volcanic ash, ecological effects, etc. So we ask people how they related to that kind of information density. And Aaron from Fairfield, Connecticut, had this to say. I think consumers of science fiction are already tuned into science

and are looking for science to be based in reality. It is expected that the author will take scientific liberties to advance the story. But one of the things I love most about the genre is how smart some of these authors are and how much time they must spend studying about the science to make it believable. I love how Jemison worked geology into the core of her story. It is so unique. I found myself using her appendices and looking up more information about the science as I read the book. That said, this is a book about disasters and about violence.

And Kijemison is a black woman writing about this oppressed group of people. And the origins, these people in the book who do earthquake magic, are treated in ways that pretty directly parallel slavery and racism in America. And some of our readers have been reacting to this as well. So Yvanna from Santa Cruz, California, said she found those parallels overwhelming. I recently finished this book, The Fifth Season, while reading chapters on the Civil War and Restoration in Jill Lepore's New Civic's book, These Truths, and watching movies like, Sorry to Bother You, and was struck about how all three seemed to spin the same tale, one of slavery, inequity, dehumanization, and hard choices. At times, this book felt so real and so current. I had to put it down just to get some space.

It sounds like people are digging into this a lot. Yeah. Yeah, they really are, John. And we want to keep digging. Next Friday on the show, we're going to sort of complete this book club with a conversation with seismologist Lucy Jones and sociologist Lori Peek. On the air, so far, we've been talking about volcanoes, earthquake, geosciences, the center of the earth. But we really plan to explore disaster sociology with this conversation.

Lori Peake has researched a lot of the social dynamics around Hurricane Katrina and who was hurt most in that situation, for example. And they're both people who have a lot to say about what makes a natural hazard into a human-scale disaster. Those are two very different things. So next week on the show, Ira's going to be back for that conversation. But let's just say I wanted to get involved. What would I do, Yon? Yes, we have one more discussion question that we want people to think about as they finish up their reading. So here it is.

This is a book where there are many different voices and many different stories. tellers from the shifting narratives to the way that societal knowledge and history is transmitted through this concept of stone lore. So how do all of these voices shape our understanding of the story? And you can think about that a little bit, John, and then join the Science Friday Book Club on Facebook. But we also really, really want you to send us your comments as voice memos. So we can include them in next week's show, kind of like we did today with other people. So to do that, check out our website, sciencefriiday.com slash fifth season.

that's ScienceFriday.com slash fifth season to send us a voice memo, join the conversation, and share your thoughts. So it's still not too late to get involved. It is not too late at all. Excellent. Radio producer Christy Taylor

and digital producer Johanna Mayer. Thank you both so much for bringing us this. It's very exciting. Thanks, John. It's our pleasure. One last thing, geeky love is in the air. Yes, the SciFri team has made valentines for you to share with the scientists in your life.

So if you want to be like Saturn and put a ring on it, head on over to ScienceFriday.com, slash valentines. Charles Bergquist is our director. Our senior producer is Christopher Entaliata, and our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. We had technical and engineering help today

from Rich Kim, Sarah Fishman, and Kevin Wolfe. We are active all week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all those social medias. And if you've got a smart speaker, ask it to play Science Friday whenever you want. Every day is now Science Friday. You can email us to. The address is SciFri at ScienceFri.com.

In New York, I'm John Denkowski.