Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners. For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman. Let’s get back into the swing of things with a quick science news roundup.
Tomorrow marks 55 years since the Apollo 11 mission launched to take humankind to the surface of the moon for the very first time. Of course, 55 is a nice round number, but 50 is even rounder. And five years ago, SciAm put out a whole bunch of stories and stunning photo essays to celebrate the moon landing. I highly recommend you go check those out at ScientificAmerican.com.
Modern spaceflight is looking just a little less glamorous at the moment, with NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore still stuck on the International Space Station. Actually, NASA would very much like me to not say that they are stuck. And in fact, last Wednesday at a press conference, the pair of astronauts said, absolutely, they are not stuck. It’s just that they aren’t scheduling a day to come back home yet, and they were originally supposed to come home a whole month ago, so...
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In other space exploration news, a group of NASA volunteers recently got unstuck from a 1,700-square-foot habitat in Houston. Now, if you’re also from the New York City area, or really any urban metropolis in the U.S., you might be thinking, "Okay, so they lived in a mansion, why did they leave? And why do we care?" But these four intrepid earth-o-nauts if you will, spent 378 days pretending to live on the surface of Mars. They did that to help NASA prep for actual crewed missions on the Red Planet. They spent that time living in an isolated structure made using 3D printing technology, which, it kind of looks like somebody’s squeezing out toothpaste, except the toothpaste is, like, red concrete. It looks pretty cool. And they spent their time on things like habitat maintenance and various robotic shenanigans that you might expect on an actual trip to Mars. They even took part in simulated surface walks in a big red sandbox, which just sounds delightful. To mimic the conditions of an actual trip to Mars, their communications with the outside world were on a delay—and any food that they didn’t bring in with them at the start had to be grown on-site. In other words, this was a tough experiment. It wasn’t all jumping around in a red sandbox all day.
The crew emerged from the habitat, which is called Mars Dune Alpha—kind of sexy, NASA, good job—on July 6. NASA says they plan to start another mission there sometime in 2025.
Speaking of life on Mars and elsewhere, astronauts could be in for an upgrade in comfort during spacewalks, though not necessarily an upgrade in dignity, depending on who you ask. Last Friday researchers from Cornell published a paper about their prototype design for basically a spin on those “stillsuits” from Dune. Very glamorous, I know. They’re meant to collect and recycle pee during spacewalks, and that might sound kind of awful to you, but here’s the thing. Astronauts already drink recycled urine on the International Space Station because that’s just a good use of resources, you know, waste not, want not. It’s expensive to bring stuff into space. And right now, when they suit up for spacewalks, takeoffs and landings, they have to wear adult diapers. Cornell researchers say they’ve solved multiple problems at once with an external catheter designed to wick away urine before sucking it up into a filtration system.
It reportedly recycles astronaut pee with 87 percent efficiency, which, like, wow, that’s really efficient use of astronaut pee. Gee whiz, guys. It creates purified water that’s then poured into a drinking bag along with added electrolytes. So you’re basically making your own Gatorade. Very cool. The whole process, from collection to purification, takes around five minutes, though I guess your mileage may vary depending on how nervous you are about peeing in front of your colleagues in space. The researchers say that this extra liquid will come in handy during longer spacesuit stretches which we can expect as humans venture back onto the moon, and perhaps even to Mars.
Okay, let’s bring it back down to Earth and talk about the 2024 hurricane season. Scientists predicted a particularly bad one this year, and unfortunately, it looks like they might be right. Late last month Hurricane Beryl became the first Category 4 to form in the month of June, and then it became the earliest Category 5 ever recorded in the Atlantic. The only other Cat 5 to occur in July was Hurricane Emily in 2005, and Beryl beat Emily by about two weeks and reached higher wind speeds.
And just to be clear, Hurricane Emily was also a big outlier. According to the National Hurricane Center, the average arrival of the first major hurricane of the season is around September 1. And in case you’re not aware, a major hurricane is anything at Cat 3 or higher. The extremely high water temperatures in the Atlantic are at least partly to blame.
After slamming into the Caribbean, Beryl made its third landfall last Monday as a dangerous Cat 1 in Texas. The tail end of the storm caused flooding from New England to the Great Lakes in the days that followed, and left millions of Texans without power in the midst of brutal temperatures.
Given all that, it’s not surprising that the Biden administration came out with new flood risk standards last Wednesday. The new standards factor in aspects of climate change like sea-level rise, which apparently we weren’t doing before when we decided where and how to build federally-funded projects like bridges and hospitals. Neat!
Starting in September, this policy will impact how FEMA funds can be used on public buildings. Basically, the idea is to keep the risk of future weather events—including ones that might become more of a problem due to climate change—in mind when we build and rebuild infrastructure.
In public health news, last Tuesday officials in Pueblo County, Colorado, confirmed a case of plague. Like, the plague. Yeah, you can still catch that one. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium known for classic hits like the Black Death, mostly infects rodents. But humans can get the bug by way of a bite from an infected flea. You can also get exposed when you come into direct contact with the meat or blood of an infected animal, which is why people like hunters and vets are usually most at risk. That being said, scratches and bites from infected cats can also do the trick. You can also get the illness from close contact with humans or animals who have pneumonic plague. That form of the plague is a lung infection, and while it can develop when another variety of the illness goes untreated, it can also spread from person to person through droplets.
An average of seven people get the plague in the United States every year, with most cases occurring out West. So, yeah, it’s not super common, but the thing is that prompt antibiotics are crucial if you want to avoid serious illness and death. So you shouldn’t ignore symptoms like sudden fever and chills, severe headache, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting or painful swollen lymph nodes.
And that’s especially true if you’ve been hunting or spending lots of time with animals or you’ve seen reports of plague cases in your area. Use insect repellent, keep your pets up to date on their flea treatments, and try to keep those furry friends away from prairie dog colonies and other rodent-heavy locations.
Listen, I know you’re almost certainly not going to get the plague. There are lots of other illnesses to worry more about, like COVID-19, which is still a thing and you should wear a mask when you’re in crowded spaces, okay? Thank you. But try not to spend too much time handling squirrel guts without taking the proper precautions, okay? I’m looking at you, taxidermists.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. Tune in on Wednesday for a chat with a very special guest. Seriously. I’m not going to tell you who. You have to wait, but you’re going to be very excited.
Before you go, would you mind reading and reviewing the show wherever you’re listening to it right now? We would so appreciate the boost. You can also send us any feedback you have at ScienceQuickly@sciam.com. We’ve already received some lovely emails. If one of those came from you, thanks so much.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada edit our show, with fact-checking from Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
