Science

Dubai Is Using Laser-Beam-Shooting Drones to Shock Rain Out of the Sky

The National Center of Meteorology in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has found a new way to make it rain. It’s using laser-beam-shooting drones to generate rainfall artificially.

Last week the country’s weather service posted two videos offering proof of the heavy downpours in Dubai’s streets.

Here’s how it works: The drones shoot laser beams into the clouds, charging them with electricity. The charge prompts precipitation by forcing water droplets together to create bigger raindrops, essentially electrifying the air to create rain.

This past March, the BBC reported that the UAE was looking to test the drone technology, which it developed in collaboration with the University of Reading in the UK.

Artificially generated rain is crucial because Dubai only gets an average of 4 inches of rainfall annually. This makes farming difficult and forces the country to import more than 80% of its food.

The efforts are part of the country’s ongoing “quest to ensure water security” since the 1990s through the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement, according to the center.

Water security remains one of the UAE’s “main future challenges” as the country relies on groundwater for two-thirds of its water needs, according to the National Center of Meteorology website. The arid nation faces low rainfall level, high temperatures and high evaporation rates of surface water, the center says. Paired with increased demand due to high population growth, this puts the UAE in a precarious water security situation, according to the center.

But rain enhancement may “offer a viable, cost-effective supplement to existing water supplies,” especially amid diminishing water resources across the globe, the center said.“While most of us take free water for granted, we must remember that it is a precious and finite resource,” according to the center.

Cloud seeding projects may also be improving the UAE’s air quality in recent years, according to a 2021 study led by American University of Sharjah. So far, rain enhancement projects have centered on the country’s mountainous north-east regions, where cumulus clouds gather in the summer, according to the National Center of Meteorology website.

There have been successes in the U.S., as well as China, India, and Thailand. Long-term cloud seeding in the mountains of Nevada have increased snowpack by 10% or more each year, according to research published by the American Meteorological Society. A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in Wyoming resulted in 5-10% increases in snowpack, according to the State of Wyoming.

The practice is used in at least eight states in the western U.S. and in dozens of countries, the Scientific American reported. The UAE is one of the first countries in the Arab Gulf region to use cloud seeding technology, according to the National Center of Meteorology website.

It also doesn’t help with the country’s sweltering temperatures. On June 6, for example, Dubai recorded a sweltering temperature high of 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dubai’s rainmaking technology is not entirely dissimilar to cloud seeding, which has been used in the US since 1923 to combat prolonged periods of drought. Cloud seeding requires crushed-up silver iodide, a chemical used in photography, to help create water clusters in the air.

Forbes reported that the UAE has invested in nine rain-enhancement projects over the past few years, which cost around $15 million in total. The bulk of those projects have involved traditional cloud-seeding techniques.

Critics of the drone technology worry that it could unintentionally cause massive flooding. And they also worry about such technology being privatized, Forbes reported.

In the US, innovative solutions to the extreme effects of the climate crisis have been explored. Billionaire Bill Gates is backing the development of a sunlight-dimming technology that might help to achieve a global cooling effect by reflecting the sun’s rays from the planet’s atmosphere.

In the meantime, more than 80 wildfires are blazing across the US, devastating communities and destroying homes. On July 13, Death Valley in California recorded a temperature high of 128 degrees Fahrenheit, the Earth’s hottest temperature record since 2017.

By: Cheryl Teh

Source: Dubai Is Using Laser-Beam-Shooting Drones to Shock Rain Out of the Sky

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This Biotech Startup Just Raised $255 Million To Make Its AI-Designed Drug A Reality

Science technology concept. Research and Development. Drug discovery.

While many AI biotech companies are on journeys to discover new drug targets, Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine is a step ahead. The startup not only scouts for new drug sites using its AI and deep learning platforms but also develops novel molecules to target them.

In February, the company announced the discovery of a new drug target for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease in which air sacs of the lungs get scarred, leading to breathing difficulties. Using information about the site, it developed potential drug targets. The startup recently raised $255 million in series C funding, taking its total to $310 million. The round was led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Insilico will use the funds to start human clinical trials, initiate multiple new programs for novel and difficult targets, and further develop its AI and drug discovery capabilities.

The company has stiff competition in the industry of using AI to discover new drugs. The global AI in Drug Discovery market was valued at $230 million in 2021 and is projected to reach a market value of over $4 billion by 2031, according to a report from Vision Gain. The area has already minted at least one billionaire, Carl Hansen of AbCellera, and others have also gained attention from investors. Flagship Pioneering-backed Valo Health announced this month it’s going public via SPAC.

Investors said that Insilico’s AI technology and partnerships with leading pharmaceuticals attracted them to the startup, despite the crowded field. “Insilico fits strongly with our strategy of investing in the best-in-class innovators in the healthcare,” said Fred Hassan of Warburg Pincus, “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is a powerful tool to revolutionize the drug discovery process and bring life-changing therapies to patients faster than ever before, he added.

CEO and founder Alex Zhavoronkov got his start in computer science, but his interest in research into slowing down aging drew him to the world of biotech. He received his Masters from Johns Hopkins and then got a PhD from Moscow State University, where his research focused on using machine learning to look at the physics of molecular interactions in biological systems.

The process for finding a preclinical target for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis highlights Insilico’s approach. The company had initially found 20 new target sites to treat fibrosis. Then it used its machine learning processes to narrow those down to a specific target which is implicated in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Then using its in-house tool, Chemistry42, it generated novel molecules to target the new site. The new preclinical drug candidate was found efficacious and safe in mice studies, the company said in a press release.

“Now we have successfully linked both biology and chemistry and nominated the preclinical candidate for a novel target, with the intention of taking it into human clinical trials, which is orders of magnitude more complex and more risky problem to solve,” Zhavoronkov added in a statement.

Treatments for this condition are a dire need. Patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis develop respiratory failure as their blood doesn’t receive adequate oxygen. Most patients die within two to three years of developing the condition. If the company’s drug candidate proves out during clinical trials, it would be a major step forward both for these patients and the industry as a whole.

“To my knowledge this is the first case where AI identified a novel target and designed a preclinical candidate for a very broad disease indication,” Zhavoronkov said in a statement.

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Aayushi Pratap

I am a New York based health and science reporter and a graduate from Columbia’s School of Journalism with a master’s in science and health reporting. I write on infectious diseases, global health, gene editing tools, intersection of public health and global warming. Previously, I worked as a health reporter in Mumbai, India, with the Hindustan Times, a daily newspaper where I extensively reported on drug resistant infections such as tuberculosis, leprosy and HIV. I also reported stories on medical malpractice, latest medical innovations and public health policies.

I have a master’s in biochemistry and a bachelor’s degree in zoology. My experience of working in a molecular and a cell biology laboratory helped me see science from researcher’s eye. In 2018 I won the EurekAlert! Fellowships for International Science Reporters. My Twitter account @aayushipratap

Source: This Biotech Startup Just Raised $255 Million To Make Its AI-Designed Drug A Reality

Critics:

CEO Alex Zhavoronkov founded Insilico Medicine in 2014, as an alternative to animal testing for research and development programs in the pharmaceutical industry. By using artificial intelligence and deep-learning techniques, Insilico is able to analyze how a compound will affect cells and what drugs can be used to treat the cells in addition to possible side effects. Through its Pharma.AI division, the company provides machine learning services to different pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and skin care companies. Insilico is known for hiring mainly through hackathons such as their own MolHack online hackathon.

The company has multiple collaborations in the applications of next-generation artificial intelligence technologies such as the generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning to the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. In conjunction with Alan Aspuru-Guzik‘s group at Harvard, they have published a journal article about an improved GAN architecture for molecular generation which combines GANs, reinforcement learning, and a differentiable neural computer.

In 2017, Insilico was named one of the Top 5 AI companies by NVIDIA for its potential for social impact. Insilico has R&D resources in Belgium, Russia, and the UK and hires talent through hackathons and other local competitions. In 2017, Insilico had raised $8.26 million in funding from investors including Deep Knowledge Ventures, JHU A-Level Capital, Jim Mellon, and Juvenescence. In 2019 it raised another $37 million from Fidelity Investments, Eight Roads Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners, WuXi AppTec, Baidu, Sinovation, Lilly Asia Ventures, Pavilion Capital, BOLD Capital, and other investors.

If You Love Staying Up Late and Sleeping In, Doing Otherwise Might Actually Hurt Your Health

Night owls might get a rap for staying up too late watching Netflix or getting lost in meme spirals on the web, but it’s not all fun and games. Study after study shows the later you sleep and rise, the more likely you are to develop some serious health complications.

A 2018 paper by researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Surrey in the UK doubles down on the findings that night owls are more likely to suffer from a host of different diseases and disorders—diabetes, mental illnesses, neurological problems, gastrointestinal issues, and heart disease, to name a few. It also concludes, for the first time, that night owls had a 10 percent increased risk of dying (in the time period used in the study) compared to those who are early to rise and early to sleep (a.k.a. larks).

“I think it’s really important to get this message out to people who are night owls,” says lead author Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “There may be some compelling consequences associated with these habits, and they might need to be more vigilant in maintaining a healthier lifestyle.”

Published in Chronobiology International, the paper analyzed 433,268 individuals who participated in the UK Biobank, a massive cohort study run from 2006 to 2010 aimed at investigating the role of genetic predisposition and environmental contributions to disease prevalence. Those participants were asked questions related to their chronotype, or preferred time and duration of sleeping during a 24-hour day. Participants identified as “definitely a morning person,” “more a morning person than evening person,” “more an evening than a morning person,” or “definitely an evening person.”

The researchers found that about 10,000 subjects died in the six-and-a-half years that followed the end of the Biobank study, and the ones who were “definite evening types” had a 10 percent increased risk of perishing compared to “definite morning types.” This number, the researchers say, was found after controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and prior health problems.

That sounds scary, sure—but there are a few limitations worth considering. For one, says Knutson, “we weren’t able to pinpoint and find out why night owls were more likely to die sooner,” so the direct cause of mortality is unknown, creating some murkiness as to what extent night owl lifestyles influenced those deaths.

“We think,” says Knutson, “it is at least partly due to our biological clocks. We think the problem is that the night owls are forced to live in a more ‘lark’ world, where you have to get up early for work and start the day than their internal clocks want to. So it’s a mismatch between the internal clock and the external world, and it’s a problem in the long run.”

The mismatch Knutson is referring to has to do with circadian rhythms, the biological processes that govern the body over the course of the 24-hour day. Circadian rhythms determine sleep patterns, energy levels, hormones, and body temperature—basically all the most important things. “There are ideal or optimal times for certain things to occur,” says Knutson.

Messing with your preferred sleep schedule can drastically disrupt your circadian rhythms, which in turn can have severe, negative effects on your health. We’re all feeling the effects of this, to some extent, no matter when we like to go to sleep; research indicates that modern humans are sleeping poorly thanks to artificial light, warmer temperatures, and stress, and scientists are working to understand what kind of impact this has on our health. Studies on extreme cases—shift workers and people like ER doctors and firefighters who regularly stay up all night—suggest the downsides can be quite dire.

Unfortunately, the Biobank data only indicated whether someone identified as a morning or evening person, not whether they had a sleep schedule that suited their chronotype. “We know what their preferred time to sleep is, but we have no idea what they were actually doing on a day-to-day basis,” says Knutson. That’s a question she hopes to address in subsequent studies.

Moreover, the data is limited to just British participants, most of whom were caucasians of Irish or English descent. It’s likely the results would be similar for other populations in the Western world, but they could also be substantially different for night owls elsewhere.

To some extent, you’re stuck with the chronotype you’re born with. Genes play a significant role in governing your internal clock, so if you’re naturally attuned to sleeping at 3:00 a.m. and waking up at 11:00 a.m., your best bet would be to find a career and lifestyle where this is okay.

But there are certain actions individuals could take to minimize the difference between their internal clock and their external life. In a perfect world, Knutson notes, employers could be more cognizant and allow employees to pick a work schedule that offers a good compromise between everyone’s needs. People can also shift their sleep and wake hours a little earlier to minimize discord, but they would need to do so gradually, and maintain that shift consistently. Lapsing into night owl habits on the weekends or on vacation is out of the question.

Of course, being a creature of the night isn’t all bad. Other studies have shown that the whole morning versus night person debate is really more of a proxy battle between organized and meticulous, or being expressive and imaginative: day-dwellers might be more focused on achieving goals and paying attention to details, but all-nighters tend to be more creative and open to new experiences. If you’re a night owl, don’t be too rash to think you should change yourself. Maybe you just need a career that harnesses your artistic side—and lets you sleep in a little.

By: Neel V. Patel

Source: Pocket

Critics:

A night owl, evening person or simply owl, is a person who tends to stay up until late at night, or the early hours of the morning. Night owls who are involuntarily unable to fall asleep for several hours after a normal time may have delayed sleep phase disorder.

The opposite of a night owl is an early bird – a lark as opposed to an owl – which is someone who tends to begin sleeping at a time that is considered early and also wakes early. Researchers traditionally use the terms morningness and eveningness^[1] for the two chronotypes or diurnality and nocturnality in animal behavior. In several countries, especially in Scandinavia, early birds are called A-people and night owls are called B-people.

The tendency to be a night owl exists on a spectrum, with most people being typical, some people having a small or moderate tendency to be a night owl, and a few having an extreme tendency to be a night owl.^[13] An individual’s own tendency can change over time and is influenced by multiple factors, including:

a genetic predisposition, which can cause the tendency to run in families,
the person’s age, with teenagers and young adults tending to be night owls more than young children or elderly people, and
the environment the person lives in, except for the patterns of light they are exposed to through seasonal changes as well as through lifestyle (such as spending the day indoors and using electric lights in the evening).^[13]

The genetic make-up of the circadian timing system underpins the difference between early and late chronotypes, or early birds and night owls.^[14] While it has been suggested that circadian rhythms may change over time, including dramatic changes that turn a morning lark to a night owl or vice versa,^[15]^[16] evidence for familial patterns of early or late waking would seem to contradict this, and individual changes are likely on a smaller scale.^[17]

References:

Horne JA, Östberg O (1976). “A self-assessment questionnaire to determine morningness-eveningness in human circadian rhythms”. Int J Chronobiol. 4 (2): 97–110. PMID 1027738.
James, Kyle (1 March 2007). “Late Sleepers in Denmark Rally for Societal Change”. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
Morris, Chris (14 June 2007). “Late risers unite in Denmark”. BBC News Channel. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
“Night owl”. http://www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2018-07-21.
Stefan Klein, Time (2008) p. 20
Greene, Gayle (2008). Insomniac. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 345. ISBN 9780520259966. OCLC 85817911.
Klein, p. 33
Nuwer, Rachel. “Night Owl and Early Bird Teens Think Differently”. Smithsonian. Smithsonian. Retrieved 4 June 2021.
“IF YOU WANT TO GET AHEAD, BE A NIGHT OWL” by Roger Dobson; THE INDEPENDENT March 24, 2013
Walker, R. J., Christopher, A. N., Wieth, M. B., & Buchanan, J. (2015). Personality, time-of-day preference, and eating behavior: The mediational role of morning-eveningness. Personality and Individual Differences, 77, 13–17.
Laura H. Smith/Charles H. Elliott, Seasonal Affective Disorder for Dummies (2007) p. 73
Maestripieri, Dario (2014-01-01). “Night Owl Women are Similar to Men in Their Relationship Orientation, Risk-taking Propensities, and Cortisol Levels: Implications for the Adaptive Significance and Evolution of Eveningness”. Evolutionary Psychology. 12 (1): 147470491401200111. doi:10.1177/147470491401200111. ISSN 1474-7049.
Roenneberg, Till; Merrow, Martha (23 May 2016). “The Circadian Clock and Human Health”. Current Biology. 26 (10): R432–R443. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.04.011. PMID 27218855.
Philip Lee Williams, On the Morning (2006) p. 41
Jeff Belanger/Kirsten Dalley, The Nightmare Encyclopedia (2005) p. 83
Walker, R. J., Kribs, Z. D., Christopher, A. N., Shewach, O. R., & Wieth, M. B. (2014). Age, the Big Five, and time-of-day preference: A mediational model. Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 170–174.
Klein, p. 21
Roenneberg, Till; Kuehnle, Tim; Juda, Myriam; Kantermann, Thomas; Allebrandt, Karla; Gordijn, Marijke; Merrow, Martha (December 2007). “Epidemiology of the human circadian clock”. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 11 (6): 429–438. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2007.07.005. hdl:11370/65d6f03a-88cd-405c-a067-4afbc1b9ba9d. ISSN 1087-0792. PMID 17936039. Torpey, Elka (October 2015). “Career Outlook: Careers for night owls and early birds”. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved 2018-04-06.

The Link Between Bioelectricity and Consciousness

Life seems to be tied to bioelectricity at every level. The late electrophysiologist and surgeon Robert Becker spent decades researching the role of the body’s electric fields in development, wound healing, and limb regrowth. His 1985 book, The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, was a fascinating deep dive into how the body is electric through and through—despite our inability to see or sense these fields with our unaided senses. But Becker’s work was far from complete.

One scientist who has taken up Becker’s line of inquiry is Michael Levin. He got hooked on the subject after he read The Body Electric. Levin has been working on “cracking the bioelectric code,” as a 2013 paper of his put it, ever since. “Evolution,” Levin has said, “really did discover how good the biophysics of electricity is for computing and processing information in non-neural tissues,” the many thousands of cell types that make up the body, our word for trillions of cells cooperating. “It’s really hard to define what’s special about neurons,” he told me. “Almost all cells do the things neurons do, just more slowly.”

How do disarranged cells and organs intuit what do to?

His team at Tufts University develops new molecular-genetic and conceptual tools to probe large-scale information processing in regeneration, embryo development, and cancer suppression—all mediated by bioelectric fields in varying degrees. This work involves examining, for example, how frogs, which normally don’t regenerate whole limbs (like salamanders do) can regrow limbs, repair their brains and spinal cords, or normalize tumors with the help of “electroceuticals” (a pun based on “pharmaceuticals”).

These are therapies that target the bioelectric circuits of tumors instead of, or together with, chemical-based therapies. Bioelectric fields are, in other words, more powerful than we have suspected and perform many surprising roles in the human body and all animal bodies.

Nature seems to have figured out that electric fields, similar to the role they play in human-created machines, can power a wide array of processes essential to life. Perhaps even consciousness itself. A veritable army of neuroscientists and electrophysiologists around the world are developing steadily deeper insights into the degree that electric and magnetic fields—“brainwaves” or “neural oscillations”—seem to reveal key aspects of consciousness.

The prevailing view for some time now has been that the brain’s bioelectric fields, which are electrical and magnetic fields produced at various physical scales, are an interesting side effect—or epiphenomenon—of the brains’ activity, but not necessarily relevant to the functioning of consciousness itself.

A number of thinkers are suggesting now, instead, that these fields may in fact be the main game in town when it comes to explaining consciousness. In a 2013 paper, philosopher Mostyn Jones reviewed various field theories of consciousness, still a minority school of thought in the field but growing.

If that approach is right, it is likely that the body’s bioelectric fields are also, more generally, associated in some manner with some kind of consciousness at various levels. Levin provided some support for this notion when I asked him about the potential for consciousness, in at least some rudimentary form, in the body’s electric fields.

“There are very few fundamental differences between neural networks and other tissues of bioelectrically communicating cells,” he said in an email. “If you think that consciousness in the brain is somehow a consequence of the brain’s electrical activity, then there’s no principled reason to assume that non-neural electric networks won’t underlie some primitive, basal (ancient) form of nonverbal consciousness.”

This way of thinking opens up exciting possibilities. It recognizes that there is perhaps some intelligence (and, to some thinkers, maybe even consciousness) in all of the body’s bioelectric fields, which are efficient sources of information transfer and even a kind of computation. In his work, Levin pieces together how these fields can contain information that guides growth and regeneration.

He sometimes describes these guiding forces as “morphogenetic fields.” It may sound like a mystical notion, but it’s quite physical and real, backed up by hard data. This information, Levin said, can be stored in multicellular electric fields “in a way that is likely very similar to how behavioral memories—of seeing a specific shape for example—are stored in a neuronal network.”

Take the case of a frog. “To become frogs, tadpoles have to rearrange their faces during metamorphosis,” Levin said. “It used to be thought that these movements were hardcoded, but our ‘Picasso’ tadpoles—which have all the organs in the wrong places—showed otherwise.” The apparent know-how that these bioelectric fields demonstrate, in terms of growing normal frogs in very un-normal circumstances, is uncanny. “Amazingly, they still largely became normal frogs!”

How do disarranged cells and organs intuit what do to? Levin, and the renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennet, recently tackled this question in a rather provocatively titled article, “Cognition All the Way Down.” Something like thinking, they argue, isn’t just something we do in our heads that requires brains.

It’s a process even individual cells themselves, and not requiring any kind of brain, also take part in. To the biologists who see this as a cavalier form of anthropomorphization, Levin and Dennet say, “Chill out.” It’s useful to anthropomorphize many different kinds of life, to see in their parts and processes a variety of teleological experience. “Ever since the cybernetics advances of the 1940s and ’50s, engineers have had a robust, practical science of mechanisms with purpose and goal-directedness—without mysticism,” they write. “We suggest that biologists catch up.”

With respect to purposes and teleology (goal-directed behavior), they make their key point clear: “We think that this commendable scientific caution has gone too far, putting biologists into a straitjacket.”

A promising route for better understanding may be found, they write, in “thinking of parts of organisms as agents, detecting opportunities and trying to accomplish missions.” This is “risky, but the payoff in insight can be large.” For Levin, at least, bioelectric fields are key mechanisms for this kind of collective decision-making. These fields connect cells and tissues together, allowing, along with synaptic connections, for rapid information exchange, not only with immediate neighbors but distant ones as well.

These communication channels are involved in the emergence of cancer, which means that, according to Levin, they can potentially be useful in curing some forms of cancer. “You can [use bioelectric fields to] induce full-on metastatic melanoma—a kind of skin cancer—in perfectly normal animals with no carcinogens or nasty chemicals that break DNA,” he said. You can also use these same fields “to normalize existing tumors or prevent them from forming.” He’s currently moving this work to human clinical models.

The importance of bioelectric fields is all about connection, information, and computation. These ingredients equal cognition for Levin and Dennett, which is, for them, a continuum of complexity that has developed over a billion years of biological evolution. It’s not an all or nothing kind of thing but a spectrum—one that plays a role in development, evolution, cancer, and in the workings of consciousness itself.

By: Tom Hunt

Tam Hunt is a philosopher, a practicing lawyer, and writer. He is the author of two books on the philosophy of consciousness: Eco, Ego, Eros: Essays in Philosophy, Spirituality, and Science and Mind, World, God: Science and Spirit in the 21st Century.

Source: The Link Between Bioelectricity and Consciousness

Seeker

Our bodies rely on an ultrafast nervous system to send impulses very quickly and it all starts with a special cell called the neuron. In this episode, Patrick will explain how these cells tell your body what to do. » Subscribe to Seeker! http://bit.ly/subscribeseeker » Watch more Human! http://bit.ly/HUMANplaylist » Visit our shop at http://shop.seeker.com

A Mars Orbiter Just Detected Something It’s Never Seen Before

water on mars

The atmosphere of Mars is thin and, compared to Earth, barely even there at all, but it can still teach us about the history of the planet and its present-day status.
The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is a project from the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos, recently detected a gas that it never found before.
Hydrogen chloride, which requires specific conditions in which to form, has been detected in the atmosphere, raising many questions.

The Mars we see today is mostly dry, dusty, and barren. Sure, there is some water locked away in ice near the poles, and possibly some melting that happens during the Martian year, but aside from that there’s very little that offers clues as to the planet’s potentially rich and life-giving history. Projects like the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, sent to Mars by the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos space group, are helping to pull the curtain back and reveal some of the secrets the planet still holds.

Now, in a pair of new studies published in Science Advances, researchers using data from the Trace Gas Orbiter reveal that they’ve found a gas they’ve never seen before around Mars. The newfound gas, hydrogen chloride, which is the first halogen gas found in the Martian atmosphere, seems to be linked to seasonal changes, but the discovery ultimately raises more questions than it answers.

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A planet’s atmosphere might not seem like a super important thing to study, especially in the case of an atmosphere as thin as that of Mars. But while the atmosphere of Mars may not be enough to support life on its surface, it can still serve as an indicator of what processes are playing out on the surface of the planet. The exciting part about discovering hydrogen chloride in the Martian atmosphere is that it suggests that water was (or still is) a significant component of the planet’s climatology.

“You need water vapour to free chlorine and you need the by-products of water—hydrogen—to form hydrogen chloride. Water is critical in this chemistry,” Kevin Olsen, co-author of the research, said in a statement. “We also observe a correlation to dust: we see more hydrogen chloride when dust activity ramps up, a process linked to the seasonal heating of the southern hemisphere.”

But what exactly does this mean? It’s still hard to say. Whatever is generating the gas appears to be linked to summer in the planet’s southern hemisphere, but beyond that, it’s difficult to determine the chain of events that is leading to its generation.

In the second paper, researchers reveal that measurements of the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the planet’s atmosphere point to huge losses of water over the planet’s history. This supports the idea that Mars was once rich with water and potentially even supported massive lakes, rivers, and oceans on its surface.

Tags: Mars, water

By Mike Wehner @MikeWehner

Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering breaking news and trends in VR, wearables, smartphones, and future tech. Most recently, Mike served as Tech Editor at The Daily Dot, and has been featured in USA Today, Time.com, and countless other web and print outlets. His love of reporting is second only to his gaming addiction.

Source: A Mars orbiter just detected something it’s never seen before – BGR

The US space agency NASA has released the first audio from Mars, a faint crackling recording of wind captured by the Perseverance rover. A microphone did not work during the rover’s descent to the surface, but it was able to capture audio once it landed on Mars. The first-of-its-kind audio has been released along with extraordinary new video footage of the rover as it descended and landed last Thursday.

On the show we are joined by Dr Swati Mohan, the Indian American scientist who led the guidance and control operations of the Mars 2020 mission. She talks about the what the ‘Seven Minutes Terror’ was and about the tiny bindi she wore that has generated a huge buzz on social media. NDTV is one of the leaders in the production and broadcasting of un-biased and comprehensive news and entertainment programmes in India and abroad. NDTV delivers reliable information across all platforms: TV, Internet and Mobile. Subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/ndtv?sub… Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ndtv Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ndtv Download the NDTV Apps: http://www.ndtv.com/page/apps Watch more videos: http://www.ndtv.com/video?yt.

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Start Rolling Your Blunts: Watch This Chill 33-Minute ‘Glide-By’ Tour of Mars

http://www.vice.com – Today

[…] 33-Minute ‘Glide-By’ Tour of Mars “Red Planet Rise,” a movie by Seán Doran made with images from a Mars orbiter, will give you the Martian fix you need […]

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Watch as NASA lands its Perseverance rover on Mars

http://www.theverge.com – February 18

[…] it decelerates to 940mph during its descent, and an enhanced navigation system that links up with a Mars orbiter to calculate exactly where in Jezero the rover will land […]

Watch: China’s Tianwen-1 captures video of Mars two days after entering planet’s orbit

http://www.eastmojo.com – February 15

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 which translates as “Questions to Heaven” includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover […]

We Just Got The First Photo of Mars From China’s Tianwen 1 Probe, And It’s Breathtaking

http://www.sciencealert.com – February 15

[…] (China National Space Administration) The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

China’s Tianwen-1 captures video of Mars two days after it enters the planet’s orbit- Technology News, Firstpost

http://www.firstpost.com – February 15

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 — which translates as “Questions to Heaven” — includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

China releases footage from Mars probe showing red planet

http://www.trtworld.com – February 15

[…] Rivalling with US The five-tonne Tianwen-1 – which translates as “Questions to Heaven” – includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

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Recruiting Brainfood for the week ahead – Issue #227 | Revue

newsletters.recruitingbrainfood.com – February 14

[…] Last Monday, the UAE successfully deployed a Mars orbiter, becoming the first Arab and Muslim majority nation to achieve the feat […]

Missed News 492

jtm71.com – February 13

[…] Speak After Trump Acquittal Watch “Mike Pence’s Ignorance Defense | The Daily Show” on YouTube A Mars orbiter just detected something it’s never seen before Trump Can’t Even Get Impeached Right | The Dail […]

China’s Mars Probe Tianwen-1 Sends Back Video of Red Planet After Successfully Entering Orbit | Technology News

gadgets.ndtv.com – February 13

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 – which translates as “Questions to Heaven” – includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

A Mars orbiter just detected something it’s never seen before –

bgr.com – February 13

The atmosphere of Mars is thin and, compared to Earth, barely even there at all, but it can still teach us about the history of the planet and its present-day status.

China spacecraft sends Mars footage for first time | Science and Technology News | Al Jazeera

http://www.aljazeera.com – February 12

[…] The 5,000-kilogramme (five-tonne) Tianwen-1 – which translates to “Questions to Heaven” – includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

China’s Mars probe sends back video of red planet, East Asia News & Top Stories

http://www.straitstimes.com – February 12

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 – which translates as “Questions to Heaven” – includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

China’s Mars probe sends back video of Red Planet

phys.org – February 12

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1—which translates as “Questions to Heaven”—includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

China releases first video of Mars taken by Tianwen-1 in orbit | Daily

http://www.dailymail.co.uk – February 12

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

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China’s Mars probe sends back video of Red Planet

http://www.digitaljournal.com – February 12

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 — which translates as “Questions to Heaven” — includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover and launched from southern China last July […]

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China’s space dream is moving in overdrive: A Long March to the Moon, Mars and beyond- Technology News, Firstpost

http://www.firstpost.com – February 11

[…] It includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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China’s Tianwen-1 probe enters Mars orbit: state media

http://www.marsdaily.com – February 11

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 — the name of which translates as “Questions to Heaven” — includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover […]

China’s ‘space dream’: A Long March to the Moon and beyond

http://www.spacedaily.com – February 11

[…] It includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

China’s ‘space dream’: A Long March to the Moon and beyond

opoyi.com – February 10

[…] It includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

China’s ‘space dream’: A Long March to the Moon and beyond

phys.org – February 10

[…] It includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

China’s Tianwen-1 probe enters Mars orbit, state media says

http://www.deccanherald.com – February 10

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 — the name of which translates as “Questions to Heaven” — includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover […]

China’s Tianwen-1 probe enters Mars orbit: state media

http://www.digitaljournal.com – February 10

[…] AFP The five-tonne Tianwen-1 — the name of which translates as “Questions to Heaven” — includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover […]

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Missions to Mars: What China and the UAE hope to find

http://www.siliconrepublic.com – February 10

[…] China already lost a Mars orbiter mission, Yinghuo-1, back in 2011 […]

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China’s Tianwen-1 space probe successfully enters orbit of Mars | Daily

http://www.dailymail.co.uk – February 10

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

UAE’s Hope probe safely reaches Mars orbit | Daily

http://www.dailymail.co.uk – February 9

[…] China’s mission includes a Mars orbiter, that will carry the lander and rover until release, a lander, that will parachute down the th […]

China’s Tianwen-1 Mars probe returns first photos showing canyons on the Red Planet surface- Technology News, Firstpost

http://www.firstpost.com – February 9

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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Mars missions from China and UAE are set to go into orbit – here’s what they could discover

http://www.copernical.com – February 8

[…] China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011 […]

A brief history of Mars missions | Space

http://www.space.com – February 8

[…] Phobos-Grunt was also carrying China’s first attempt at a Mars orbiter, along with an experiment run by the U […]

Mars missions from China and UAE are set to go into orbit – here’s what they could discover

phys.org – February 8

[…] China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011 […]

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UAE’s ‘Hope’ Probe To Be First In Trio of Mars Mission | Majalla

eng.majalla.com – February 8

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

Popular Mechanics

http://www.popularmechanics.co.za – February 8

[…] These include a Mars orbiter, lander, and a rover […]

» China’s Space Probe Sends Back First Image of Mars

http://www.cryptogon.com – February 8

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

It Looks Like The UAE Is About to Win The ‘Race to Mars’

http://www.sciencealert.com – February 8

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

Mars Missions From China and UAE Are Set to Go Into Orbit – Here’s What You Need to Know

en.brinkwire.com – February 8

[…] China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011 […]

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Mars Missions From China and UAE Are Set to Go Into Orbit – Here’s What You Need to Know

scitechdaily.com – February 8

[…] China already lost a Mars orbiter mission (Yinghuo-1) back in 2011 […]

UAE’s Mars probe ‘Hope’ to be 1st Arab space mission, 5th to reach Red Planet | The Times of Israel

http://www.timesofisrael.com – February 7

[…] The five-ton Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that for three months will study the planet’s soil an […]

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Next stop Mars: Three spacecraft arriving at Red Planet from tomorrow | Daily

http://www.dailymail.co.uk – February 7

[…] China’s mission includes a Mars orbiter, that will carry the lander and rover until release, a lander, that will parachute down the th […]

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China’s space probe sends back its first image of Mars

http://www.marsdaily.com – February 7

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

UAE’s ‘Hope’ probe to be first in trio of Mars missions

http://www.marsdaily.com – February 7

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

UAE’s ‘Hope’ probe to be first in trio of Mars missions

http://www.copernical.com – February 7

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

Mars missions: UAE’s ‘Hope’ probe to be first in trio of Mars missions

economictimes.indiatimes.com – February 7

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

UAE’s ‘Hope’ probe to be first in trio of Mars missions

phys.org – February 7

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a solar-powered rover that will for three months study the planet’s soil an […]

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China’s space probe sends back its first image of Mars

http://www.msn.com – February 7

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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Chinese Probe Sends Back Its First Picture of Mars – Slashdot

science.slashdot.org – February 6

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, lander, and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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China’s space probe sends back its first image of Mars

phys.org – February 6

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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China’s space probe sends back its first image of Mars

http://www.msn.com – February 6

[…] The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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China’s space probe Tianwen-1 snaps its first image of Mars as it heads towards the planet to study its soil – ABC News

http://www.abc.net.au – February 6

[…] China could set world record with inaugural mission The 5 tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet’s soil […]

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China’s space probe sends back its first image of Mars