We have identified the coldest star ever found to produce radio waves – a brown dwarf too small to be a regular star and too massive to be a planet.
Our findings, published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, detail the detection of pulsed radio emission from this star, called WISE J0623.
Despite being roughly the same size as Jupiter, this dwarf star has a magnetic field much more powerful than our Sun’s. It’s joining the ranks of just a small handful of known ultra-cool dwarfs that generate repeating radio bursts.
Making waves with radio stars
With over 100 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, it might surprise you astronomers have detected radio waves from fewer than 1,000 of them. One reason is because radio waves and optical light are generated by different physical processes.
Unlike the thermal (heat) radiation coming from the hot outer layer of a star, radio emission is the result of particles called electrons speeding up and interacting with magnetised gas around the star.
Because of this we can use the radio emission to learn about the atmospheres and magnetic fields of stars, which ultimately could tell us more about the potential for life to survive on any planets that orbit them.
Another factor is the sensitivity of radio telescopes which, historically, could only detect sources that were very bright.
Most of the detections of stars with radio telescopes over the past few decades have been flares from highly active stars or energetic bursts from the interaction of binary (two) star systems. But with the improved sensitivity and coverage of new radio telescopes, we can detect less luminous stars such as cool brown dwarfs.
Mass comparison of stars, brown dwarfs and planets (not to scale). NASA/JPL-Caltech
WISE J0623 has a temperature of around 700 Kelvin. That’s equivalent to 420℃ or about the same temperature as a commercial pizza oven – pretty hot by human standards, but quite cold for a star.
These cool brown dwarfs can’t sustain the levels of atmospheric activity that generates radio emission in hotter stars, making stars like WISE J0623 harder for radio astronomers to find.
How did we find the coolest radio star?
This is where the new Australian SKA Pathfinder radio telescope comes in. This is located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, and has an array of 36 antennas, each 12 metres in diameter.
The telescope can see large regions of the sky in a single observation and has already surveyed nearly 90% of it. From this survey we have identified close to three million radio sources, most of which are active galactic nuclei – black holes at the centres of distant galaxies.
So how do we tell which of these millions of sources are radio stars? One way is to look for something called “circularly polarised radio emission”.
Radio waves, like other electromagnetic radiation, oscillate as they move through space. Circular polarization occurs when the electric field of the wave rotates in a spiralling or corkscrew motion as it propagates.
For our search we used the fact that the only astronomical objects known to emit a significant fraction of circularly polarized light are stars and pulsars (rotating neutron stars).
By selecting only highly circularly polarized radio sources from an earlier survey of the sky, we found WISE J0623. You can see using the slider in the figure above that once you switch to polarized light, there is only one object visible.
What does this discovery mean?
Was the radio emission from this star some rare one-off event that happened during our 15 minute observation? Or could we detect it again?
Previous research has shown that radio emission detected from other cool brown dwarfs was tied to their magnetic fields and generally repeated at the same rate as the star rotates.
To investigate this we did follow-up observations with CSIRO’s Australian Telescope Compact Array, and with the MeerKAT telescope operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.
The bottom panel shows the brightness of polarized light over time. The top panel shows emission at different radio frequencies. Author Provided.
These new observations showed that every 1.9 hours there were two bright, circularly polarized bursts from WISE J0623 followed by a half an hour delay before the next pair of bursts.
WISE J0623 is the coolest brown dwarf detected via radio waves and is the first case of persistent radio pulsations. Using this same search method, we expect future surveys to detect even cooler brown dwarfs.
Studying these missing link dwarf stars will help improve our understanding of stellar evolution and how giant exoplanets (planets in other solar systems) develop magnetic fields.
We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji as the traditional owners of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory site where Australian SKA Pathfinder is located, and the Gomeroi people as the traditional owners of the Australian Telescope Compact Array site.
Assisted reproductive technologies are medical procedures that help people experiencing difficulty having or an inability to have biological children of their own. From in vitro fertilization to genetic screening to creation of viable eggs from the skin cells of two male mice, each new development speaks to the potential of reproductive technologies to expand access to the experience of pregnancy.
Translating advances from the lab to the clinic, however, comes with challenges that go far beyond the purely technical.
Conversations around the ethics and implications of cutting-edge research often happen after the fact, when the science and technology have advanced beyond the point at which open dialogue could best protect affected groups. In the spirit of starting such cross-discipline conversations earlier, we invited developmental biologist Keith Latham of Michigan State University and bioethicist Mary Faith Marshall of the University of Virginia to discuss the ethical and technological potential of in vitro gametogenesis and assisted reproductive technology post-Roe.
How new are the ethical considerations raised by assisted reproductive technologies?
Keith
Every new technology raises many of the same questions, and likely new ones. On the safety and risk-benefit side of the ethical conversation, there’s nothing here that we haven’t dealt with since the 1970s with other reproductive technologies. But it’s important to keep asking questions, because the benefits are hugely dependent on the success rate. There are potential biological costs, but also possible social costs, financial costs, societal costs and many others.
Mary Faith
It’s probably been that way even longer. One of my mentors, Joseph Francis Fletcher, a pioneering bioethicist and Episcopal priest, wrote a book called “Morals and Medicine” in 1954. It was the first non-Roman Catholic treatment of bioethics. And he raised a lot of these issues there, including the technological imperative – the idea that because we can develop the technology to do something, we therefore should develop it.
Fletcher also said that the use of artifice, or human-made creations, is supremely human. That’s what we do: We figure out how things work and we develop new technologies like vaccines and heart-lung machines based on evolving scientific knowledge.
I think that in most cases, scientists should be involved in thinking about the implications of their work. But often, researchers focus more on the direct applications of their work than the potential indirect consequences.
Given the evolution of assisted reproductive technology, and the fact that its evolution is going to continue, I think one of the central questions to consider is, what are the goals of developing it? For assisted reproduction, it’s to help infertile people and people in nontraditional relationships have children.
What are some recent developments in the field of assisted reproductive technology?
Keith
One recent advance in assisted reproductive technology is the expansion of pre-implantation genetic testing methods, particularly DNA sequencing. Many genes come in different variants, or alleles, that can be inherited from each parent. Providers can determine whether an embryo bears a “bad” allele that may increase the risk of certain diseases and select embryos with “healthy” alleles.
Genetic screening raises several ethical concerns. For example, the parents’ genetic profiles could be unwillingly inferred from that of the embryo. This possibility may deter prospective parents from having children, and such knowledge may also have potential effects on any future child. The cost of screening and potential need for additional cycles of IVF may also increase disparities.
There are also considerations about the accuracy of screening predictions without accounting for environmental effects, and what level of genetic risk is “serious” enough for an embryo to be excluded. More extensive screening also raises concerns about possible misuse for purposes other than disease prevention, such as production of “designer babies.”
In vitro gametogenesis involves making egg or sperm cells from other adult cells in the body.
At a genome-editing conference in March 2023, researchers announced that they were able to delete and duplicate whole chromosomes from the skin cells of male mice to make eggs. This method is one potential way to make eggs that do not carry genetic abnormalities.
They were very upfront that this was done at 1% efficiency in mice, which could be lower in humans. That means something bad happened to 99% of the embryos. The biological world is not typically binary, so a portion of that surviving 1% could still be abnormal. Just because the mice survived doesn’t mean they’re OK. I would say at this point, it would be unethical to try this on people.
As with some forms of genetic screening, using this technique to reduce the risk of one disease could inadvertently increase the risk of another. Determining that it is absolutely safe to duplicate a chromosome would require knowing every allele of every gene on that chromosome, and what each allele could do to the health of a person. That’s a pretty tall order, as that could involve identifying hundreds to thousands of genes, and the effects of all their variants may not be known.
Mary Faith
That raises the issue of efficacy and costs to yet another order of magnitude.
Keith
Genome editing with CRISPR technology in people carries similar concerns. Because of potential limitations in how precise the technology can be, it may be difficult for researchers to say they are absolutely 100% certain there won’t be off-target changes in the genome. Proceeding without that full knowledge could be risky.
But that’s where bioethicists need to come into play. Researchers don’t know what the full risk is, so how do you make that risk-benefit calculation?
Mary Faith
There’s the option of a voluntary global moratorium on using these technologies on human embryos. But somebody somewhere is still going to do it, because the technology is just sitting there, waiting to be moved forward.
How will the legal landscape affect the development and implementation of assisted reproductive technologies?
Mary Faith
Any research that involves human embryos is in some ways politicized. Not only because the government provides funding to the basic science labs that conduct this research, but because of the wide array of beliefs that members of the public at large have about when life begins or what personhood means.
The Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, has implications for assisted reproduction and beyond. Most people who are pregnant don’t even know they’re pregnant at the earliest stages, and somewhere around 60% of those pregnancies end naturally because of genetic aberrations. Between 1973 and 2005, over 400 women were arrested for miscarriage in the U.S., and I think that number is going to grow. The implications for reproductive health care, and for assisted reproduction in the future, are challenging and frightening.
What will abortion restrictions mean for people who have multiple-gestation pregnancies, in which they carry more than one embryo at the same time? In order to have one healthy child born from that process, the other embryos often need to be removed so they don’t all die. In the past 40 years, the number of twin births doubled and triplet and higher-order births quadrupled, primarily because of fertility treatments.
IVF may transfer one, two, or sometimes three embryos at a time. The cost of care for preterm birth, which is one possible outcome of multiple-gestation pregnancies, can be high. That’s in addition to the cost of delivery. IVF clinics are increasingly transferring just one embryo to mitigate such concerns.
The life-at-conception bills that have been put forth in some U.S. state legislatures and Congress may contain language claiming they are not meant to prevent IVF. But the language of the bills could be extended to affect procedures such as IVF with pre-implantation genetic testing to detect chromosomal abnormalities, particularly when single-embryo transfer is the goal. Pre-implantation genetic testing has been increasing, with one study estimating that over 40% of all IVF cycles in the U.S. in 2018 involved genetic screening.
Could life-at-conception bills criminalize clinics that don’t transfer embryos known to be genetically abnormal? Freezing genetically abnormal embryos could avoid destroying them, but that raises questions of, to what end? Who would pay for the storage, and who would be responsible for those embryos?
How can we determine whether the risks outweigh the benefits when so much is unknown?
Keith
Conducting studies in animal models is an important first step. In some cases, it either hasn’t been done or hasn’t been done extensively. Even with animal studies, you have to recognize that mice, rabbits and monkeys are not human. Animal models may reduce some risks before a technology is used in people, but they won’t eliminate all risks, because of biological differences between species.
The death of Jesse Gelsinger, who was a participant in a gene therapy clinical trial in 1999, led to a halt in all gene therapy clinical trials in the U.S. for a time. When the Food and Drug Administration investigated what went wrong, they found huge numbers of adverse events in both humans and animals that should have been reported to the advisory committee but weren’t. Notably, the principal investigator of the trial was also the primary shareholder of the biotech company that made the drug being tested. That raises questions about the reality of oversight.
I think something like that earlier NIH advisory committee but for reproductive technologies would still be advisable. But researchers, policymakers and regulators need to learn from the lessons of the past to try to ensure that – especially in early-phase research – we’re very thoughtful about the potential risks and that research participants really understand what the implications are for participation in research. That would be one model for translating research from the animal into the human.
The FDA approved a gene therapy for a form of congenital vision loss in 2017. The child in this photo, then 8, first received gene therapy at age 4. Bill West/AP Photo
Keith
A process to make sure that the people conducting studies don’t have a conflict of interest, like having the potential to commercially profit from the technology, would be useful.
Caution, consensus and cooperation should not take second place to profit motives. Altering the human genome in a way that allows human-made genetic changes to be propagated throughout the population has a potential to alter the genetics of the human species as a whole.
Mary Faith
That raises the question of how long it will take for long-term effects to show. It’s one thing for an implanted egg not to survive. But how long will it take to know whether there are effects that aren’t obvious at birth?
Keith
We’re still collecting long-term outcome data for people born using different reproductive technologies. So far there have been no obviously horrible consequences. But some abnormalities could take decades to manifest, and there are many variables to contend with.
One can arguably say that there’s substantial good in helping couples have babies. There can be a benefit to their emotional well-being, and reproduction is a natural part of human health and biology. And a lot of really smart, dedicated people are putting a lot of energy into making sure that the risks are minimized. We can also look to some of the practices and approaches to oversight that have been used over the past several decades.
Mary Faith
And thinking about international guidelines, such as from the Council for International Medical Science and other groups, could provide guidance on protecting human research subjects.
Keith
You hate to advocate for a world where the automatic response to anything new is “no, don’t do that.” My response is, “Show me it’s safe before you do it.” I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Some people have a view that scientists don’t think about the ethics of research and what’s right and wrong, advisable or inadvisable. But we do think about it. I co-direct a research training program that includes teaching scientists how to responsibly and ethically conduct research, including speakers who specifically address the ethics of reproductive technologies. It is valuable to have a dialogue between scientists and ethicists, because ethicists will often think about things from a different perspective.
As people go through their scientific careers and see new technologies unfold over time, these discussions can help them develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of the broader impact of their research. It becomes our job to make sure that each generation of scientists is motivated to think about these things.
Mary Faith
It’s also really important to include stakeholders – people who are nonscientists, people who experience barriers to reproduction and people who are opposed to the idea – so they have a voice at the table as well. That’s how you get good policies, right? You have everyone who should be at the table, at the table.
A new study published in Child Development explores the relationship between autistic traits, theory of mind abilities, and self-conscious emotions in children. The researchers examined whether autistic traits were associated with deficits in theory of mind, meaning the ability to understand others’ mental states and predict their behaviors, and whether these deficits were related to the experience of self-conscious emotions, specifically shame-like avoidance. The results indicate that children with higher levels of autistic traits showed deficits in theory of mind. Additionally, autistic trai...
In the daily heat records race. it’s a marathon. And Marathon is in for the win. On Wednesday, Miami and the Florida Keys city both set daily heat records, again. ▪ Miami soared to 97, breaking the July 12 record of 95 set in 1981. ▪ Marathon baked at 98, the hottest in Florida, breaking the July 12 record of 97 for the Middle Keys city set in 2022. Marathon statsMarathon boundaries are from the east end of the Seven Mile Bridge at Mile Marker 47 to the west end of Toms Harbors Bridge, at MM 60, about an hour drive from Key West and Key Largo. Marathon is touted by city officials as “the heart...
A meta-analytic review of previous studies indicates that obese individuals have an increased risk of depression and that this relationship isn’t just correlational — obesity might be one of the causes of depression. The researchers argue that the increased occurrence of depression in the population in recent decades might be at least partly due to the increase in obesity. The study was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. Obesity is a medical condition where a person has too much body fat. It is determined by calculating a person’s body mass index (BMI) using their height and wei...
GENEVA (Reuters) - It is possible to end AIDS by 2030 if countries demonstrate the political will to invest in prevention and treatment and adopt non-discriminatory laws, the United Nations said on Thursday. In 2022, an estimated 39 million people around the world were living with HIV, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS program. HIV can progress to AIDS if left untreated. "We have a solution if we follow the leadership of countries that have forged strong political commitment to put people first and invest in evidence-based HIV prevention and treatment programmes," UNAIDS said in a r...
By Jennifer Rigby LONDON (Reuters) - The imminent move to label aspartame as a possible carcinogen comes after years of advocacy from a leading consumer group in the United States and a handful of cancer scientists hoping to settle a decades-long debate over the sweetener's safety. Reuters reported last month that the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), known as the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), was set to make that declaration on July 14, according to two sources with knowledge of the process. The designation as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" w...
Over the past 20 years huge swathes of the world's oceans have changed color, displaying a subtle greening towards the tropics that researchers say points to the effect of climate change on life in the world's seas.
In the new research published on Wednesday, scientists said they had detected shifts in colors across more than half of the world's oceans -- an expanse bigger than Earth's total land area.
Authors of the study in Nature think that is down to changes in ecosystems, and particularly in tiny plankton, which are the centerpiece of the marine food web and play a crucial part in stabilizing our atmosphere.
"The reason we care about the color changes is because the color reflects the state of the ecosystem, so color changes mean ecosystem changes," lead author B.B. Cael, of Britain's National Oceanography Centre, told AFP.
The color of the seas when seen from space can paint a picture of what is going on in the upper layers of the water.
A deep blue would tell you that there is not much life, while if the water is greener it is likely to have more activity, specifically from the photosynthesizing phytoplankton, which like plants contain the green pigment chlorophyll.
These produce a significant amount of the oxygen we breathe, are a crucial part of the global carbon cycle and are a foundational part of the ocean food web.
Life colors
Researchers are keen to develop ways of monitoring changes in ecosystems in order to track climate changes and enshrine protected areas.
But previous studies have suggested you would need three decades of ocean chlorophyll monitoring to detect a trend because of annual variations.
In the latest study, researchers broadened the color spectrum, looking at seven hues of ocean color monitored by the MODIS-Aqua satellite from 2002 to 2022.
These are too subtle for humans to see and would look largely blue to the naked eye.
The authors analyzed the observational data to detect a trend above the year-to-year variability and then compared it to computer models of what would be expected with climate change.
They found that the real-world observations tallied closely with the changes predicted.
While the researchers said more work would be needed to find out what exactly those color changes might mean, they said climate change was very likely to be the cause.
"I've been running simulations that have been telling me for years that these changes in ocean color are going to happen," said co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Center for Global Change Science.
"To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening. And these changes are consistent with man-induced changes to our climate."
I am an astronomer who studies astrobiology and planets around distant stars. For the last seven years, I have been co-leading a team that is developing a new kind of space telescope that could collect a hundred times more light than the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest space telescope ever built.
Almost all space telescopes, including Hubble and Webb, collect light using mirrors. Our proposed telescope, the Nautilus Space Observatory, would replace large, heavy mirrors with a novel, thin lens that is much lighter, cheaper and easier to produce than mirrored telescopes. Because of these differences, it would be possible to launch many individual units into orbit and create a powerful network of telescopes.
Exoplanets, like TOI-700d shown in this artist’s conception, are planets beyond our solar system and are prime candidates in the search for life. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
The need for larger telescopes
Exoplanets – planets that orbit stars other than the Sun – are prime targets in the search for life. Astronomers need to use giant space telescopes that collect huge amounts of light to study these faint and faraway objects.
The James Webb Space Telescope is just barely able to search exoplanets for signs of life. NASA
Existing telescopes can detect exoplanets as small as Earth. However, it takes a lot more sensitivity to begin to learn about the chemical composition of these planets. Even Webb is just barely powerful enough to search certain exoplanets for clues of life – namely gases in the atmosphere.
The James Webb Space Telescope cost more than US$8 billion and took over 20 years to build. The next flagship telescope is not expected to fly before 2045 and is estimated to cost $11 billion. These ambitious telescope projects are always expensive, laborious and produce a single powerful – but very specialized – observatory.
A new kind of telescope
In 2016, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman invited me and 14 other professors and NASA scientists – all experts on exoplanets and the search for extraterrestrial life – to Los Angeles to answer one question: What will exoplanet space telescopes look like in 50 years?
In our discussions, we realized that a major bottleneck preventing the construction of more powerful telescopes is the challenge of making larger mirrors and getting them into orbit. To bypass this bottleneck, a few of us came up with the idea of revisiting an old technology called diffractive lenses.
Diffractive lenses, left, are much thinner compared to similarly powerful refractive lenses, right. Pko/Wikimedia Commons
Conventional lenses use refraction to focus light. Refraction is when light changes direction as it passes from one medium to another – it is the reason light bends when it enters water. In contrast, diffraction is when light bends around corners and obstacles. A cleverly arranged pattern of steps and angles on a glass surface can form a diffractive lens.
The first such lenses were invented by the French scientist Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1819 to provide lightweight lenses for lighthouses. Today, similar diffractive lenses can be found in many small-sized consumer optics – from camera lenses to virtual reality headsets.
Thin, simple diffractive lenses are notorious for their blurry images, so they have never been used in astronomical observatories. But if you could improve their clarity, using diffractive lenses instead of mirrors or refractive lenses would allow a space telescope to be much cheaper, lighter and larger.
One of the benefits of diffractive lenses is that they can remain thin while increasing in diameter. Daniel Apai/University of Arizona, CC BY-ND
A thin, high-resolution lens
After the meeting, I returned to the University of Arizona and decided to explore whether modern technology could produce diffractive lenses with better image quality. Lucky for me, Thomas Milster – one of the world’s leading experts on diffractive lens design – works in the building next to mine. We formed a team and got to work.
Over the following two years, our team invented a new type of diffractive lens that required new manufacturing technologies to etch a complex pattern of tiny grooves onto a piece of clear glass or plastic. The specific pattern and shape of the cuts focuses incoming light to a single point behind the lens. The new design produces a near-perfect quality image, far better than previous diffractive lenses.
A diffractive lens bends light using etchings and patterns on its surface. Daniel Apai/University of Arizona, CC BY-ND
Because it is the surface texture of the lens that does the focusing, not the thickness, you can easily make the lens bigger while keeping it very thin and lightweight. Bigger lenses collect more light, and low weight means cheaper launches to orbit – both great traits for a space telescope.
In August 2018, our team produced the first prototype, a 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter lens. Over the next five years, we further improved the image quality and increased the size. We are now completing a 10-inch (24-cm) diameter lens that will be more than 10 times lighter than a conventional refractive lens would be.
Power of a diffraction space telescope
This new lens design makes it possible to rethink how a space telescope might be built. In 2019, our team published a concept called the Nautilus Space Observatory.
Using the new technology, our team thinks it is possible to build a 29.5-foot (8.5-meter) diameter lens that would be only about 0.2 inches (0.5 cm) thick. The lens and support structure of our new telescope could weigh around 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms). This is more than three times lighter than a Webb–style mirror of a similar size and would be bigger than Webb’s 21-foot (6.5-meter) diameter mirror.
The thin lens allowed the team to design a lighter, cheaper telescope, which they named the Nautilus Space Observatory. Daniel Apai/University of Arizona, CC BY-ND
The lenses have other benefits, too. First, they are much easier and quickerto fabricate than mirrors and can be made en masse. Second, lens-based telescopes work well even when not aligned perfectly, making these telescopes easier to assemble and fly in space than mirror-based telescopes, which require extremely precise alignment.
Finally, since a single Nautilus unit would be light and relatively cheap to produce, it would be possible to put dozens of them into orbit. Our current design is in fact not a single telescope, but a constellation of 35 individual telescope units.
Each individual telescope would be an independent, highly sensitive observatory able to collect more light than Webb. But the real power of Nautilus would come from turning all the individual telescopes toward a single target.
By combining data from all the units, Nautilus’ light-collecting power would equal a telescope nearly 10 times larger than Webb. With this powerful telescope, astronomers could search hundreds of exoplanets for atmospheric gases that may indicate extraterrestrial life.
Although the Nautilus Space Observatory is still a long way from launch, our team has made a lot of progress. We have shown that all aspects of the technology work in small-scale prototypes and are now focusing on building a 3.3-foot (1-meter) diameter lens. Our next steps are to send a small version of the telescope to the edge of space on a high-altitude balloon.
With that, we will be ready to propose a revolutionary new space telescope to NASA and, hopefully, be on the way to exploring hundreds of worlds for signatures of life.
Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated movie “Oppenheimer,” set for release July 21, 2023, depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. But while the Manhattan Project wouldn’t have been possible without the work of many accomplished female scientists, the only women seen in the movie’s trailer are either hanging laundry, crying or cheering the men on.
The only women featured in the official trailer for Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ are crying, hanging laundry or supporting the men.
The Manhattan Project would not have been possible without the work of physicist Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission. Meitner used Einstein’s E=MC² to calculate how much energy would be released by splitting uranium atoms, and it was that development that would prompt Einstein to sign a letter urging President Franklin Roosevelt to begin the United States’ atomic research program.
Einstein called Meitner the “Madame Curie of Germany” and was one of a pantheon of physicists, from Max Planck to Niels Bohr, who nominated Meitner for a Nobel Prize 48 times during her lifetime.
Meitner never won. Instead, the prize for fission went to Otto Hahn, her male lab partner of 30 years in Berlin. Hahn received the news of his nomination under house arrest in England, where he and other German scientists were being held to determine how far the Third Reich had advanced with its atomic program.
Of Jewish descent, Meitner had been forced to flee the Nazis in 1938 and refused to use this scientific discovery to develop a bomb. Rather, she spent the rest of her life working to promote nuclear disarmament and advocating for the responsible use of nuclear energy.
Meitner was not the only woman who made a significant contribution during this time. But the lack of physics role models like Meitner in popular media leads to real-life consequences. Meitner doesn’t appear as a character in the film, as she was not part of the Manhattan Project, but we hope the script alludes to her groundbreaking work.
Studies have found that by the age of 6, girls are less likely than boys to believe they are “really, really smart.” As these students get older, often the norms in science classes and curricula tend not to represent the interests and values of girls. All of these stereotypes and factors can influence women’s perception of their ability to do physics.
Research shows that at the end of a yearlong college physics course sequence, women with an “A” have the same physics self-efficacy as men with a “C”. A person’s physics self-efficacy is their belief about how good they are at solving physics problems – and one’s self-efficacy can shape their career trajectory.
Women drop out of college science and engineering majors with significantly higher grade-point averages than men who drop out. In some cases, women who drop out have the same GPA as men who complete those majors. Compared to men, women in physics courses feel significantly less recognized for their accomplishments. Recognition from others as a person who can excel in physics is the strongest predictor of a student’s physics identity, or whether they see themselves as someone who can excel in physics.
More frequent media recognition of female scientists, such as Meitner, could vicariously influence young women, who may see them as role models. This recognition alone can boost young women’s physics self-efficacy and identity.
When Meitner started her career at the beginning of the 20th century, male physicists made excuses about why women had no place in a lab – their long hair might catch fire on Bunsen burners, for instance. We like to believe we have made progress in the past century, but the underrepresentation of women in physics is still concerning.
If diverse groups of scientists are involved in brainstorming challenging problems, not only can they devise better, future-oriented solutions, but those solutions will also benefit a wider range of people.
Individuals’ lived experiences affect their perspectives – for example, over two centuries ago, mathematician Ada Lovelace imagined applications far beyond what the original inventors of the computer intended. Similarly, women today are more likely to focus on applications of quantum computers that will benefit their communities. Additionally, physicists from Global South countries are more likely to develop improved stoves, solar cells, water purification systems or solar-powered lamps. The perspectives that diverse groups bring to science problems can lead to new innovations.
Our intention is not to disparage the “Oppenheimer” movie, but to point out that by not centering media attention on diverse voices – including those of women in physics like Meitner – filmmakers perpetuate the status quo and stereotypes about who belongs in physics. Additionally, young women continue to be deprived of exposure to role models who could inspire their academic and professional journeys
By Mariko Katsumura TOKYO (Reuters) - A third-year student at one of Japan's top engineering universities, Yuna Kato has her sights set on a career in research but fears it might be short-lived if she has children. Kato says relatives have tried to steer her away from science, technology, engineering and mathematics, on the notion that women in the STEM field are too busy at work to juggle dating or families so have a hard time finding husbands. "My grandmother and mother often tell me that there are non-STEM jobs out there if I want to raise children," she said. Kato has made it this far, but...
Washington (AFP) - NASA is set Wednesday to unveil a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope a year after it first stunned the world with breathtaking views of the distant cosmos. Webb, the most powerful observatory in orbit, was launched in December 2021 from French Guiana, on a million mile (1.6 million kilometer) voyage to a region called the second Lagrange point. Its first full color picture was revealed by President Joe Biden on July 11, 2022: the clearest view yet of the early universe, going back 13 billion years. The next wave included "mountains" and "valleys" of a star-forming...
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) suggested "penguins" were to blame for convincing some scientists that Covid-19 was created in nature.
At a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday, Malliotakis asked two professors why scientists initially discounted a theory that the Covid-19 virus leaked from a lab.
"All of a sudden, you did a 180, and [said] it couldn't possibly come from a lab or maybe, but you're all saying that you know, this was by sure from nature," Malliotakis said. "What happened in those three days?"
Tulane University School of Medicine Professor Robert Garry explained that researchers were following the science.
"Where did that data come from?" Malliotakis pressed.
"The scientific literature, you know, the publication of the pangolin genomic sequence showed that there was a receptor binding domain," Garry said. "And it was a very important piece of data because it showed that a lot of the theories about, you know, the virus having been engineered or put together in a laboratory were not true because here was a virus in nature that had a receptor binding domain with exactly the same structure."
Malliotakis confused the research on pangolins, which resembles an anteater, with penguins.
"I just find it all interesting based on what my other colleague here, the chairman of the committee, said in reply to the issue of the penguins," she said.
In 2020, researchers found a portion of a pangolin's genomic sequence was a 99% match for Covid-19. Scientists speculated that pangolins may have been an intermediary host passing the virus to humans.
