Science

You likely know someone who seems to age slowly, appearing years younger than their birth date suggests. And you likely have seen the opposite – someone whose body and mind seem much more ravaged by time than others. Why do some people seem to glide though their golden years and others physiologically struggle in midlife?

I have worked in the field of aging for all of my scientific career, and I teach the cellular and molecular biology of aging at the University of Michigan. Aging research doesn’t tend to be about finding the one cure that fixes all that may ail you in old age. Instead, the last decade or two of work points to aging as a multi-factoral process – and no single intervention can stop it all.

A scorching hot world where metal clouds rain drops of titanium is the most reflective planet ever observed outside of our Solar System, astronomers said on Monday.

This strange world, which is more than 260 light years from Earth, reflects 80 percent of the light from its host star, according to new observations from Europe's exoplanet-probing Cheops space telescope.

When aliens or our distant progeny sift through layers of sediment 500,000 years from now to decode the Earth's past, they will find unusual evidence of the abrupt change that upended life half-a-million years earlier: chicken bones.

That is the conclusion of scientists whose findings are offered as proof that rapid expansion of human appetites and activity so radically altered natural systems as to tip Earth into a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene, or the "era of humans".

In 1981, newly minted palaeobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz assumed he was headed for a discreet career retrieving and deciphering fossils from Earth's deep past.

For three decades the British scientist was, in his words, an itinerant geologist.

At least 45 percent of the United States' tap water is contaminated with toxic "forever" chemicals, according to a study by a government agency.

Found in everyday products such as non-stick frying pans, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can linger in the environment for a long time and have been linked to serious health conditions including cancer and birth defects.

When you turn on a lamp to brighten a room, you are experiencing light energy transmitted as photons, which are small, discrete quantum packets of energy. These photons must obey the sometimes strange laws of quantum mechanics, which, for instance, dictate that photons are indivisible, but at the same time, allow a photon to be in two places at once.

Similar to the photons that make up beams of light, indivisible quantum particles called phonons make up a beam of sound. These particles emerge from the collective motion of quadrillions of atoms, much as a “stadium wave” in a sports arena is due to the motion of thousands of individual fans. When you listen to a song, you’re hearing a stream of these very small quantum particles.

Hundreds of scientists protested government efforts to restrict educational access to Western science theories, including Darwin’s theory of evolution, in June 2023 in India. Similarly, scientists in Mexico participated in a research strike in May 2023 to protest a national law they claimed would threaten the conditions for basic research. And during the same month in Norway, three scientists were arrested for protesting the nation’s slow-moving climate policy.

As these among many other actions show, scientists today are speaking out on a variety of political and social issues related to their own research fields and in solidarity with other social movements.

When you hear news reports about volcanoes spewing lava and ash, you may worry about the people nearby. In fact, almost one in ten people around the world live within 100 kilometres of an active volcano. For those living close to volcanoes, farming on their fertile soils, or visiting their spectacular landscapes, it is crucial to understand the drivers of eruption.

Why is the volcano erupting? How will the eruption evolve? When will it finish?

Our new research published today in Science Advances applies laser technology to read into the chemical composition of erupted magma over time.

Because the chemistry of magmas affects their fluidity, explosivity and hazard potential, our work could help future monitoring and forecasting of the evolution of volcanic eruptions.

Untangling the chemistry of erupted melt

Magma – molten rock – is composed of liquid (known as “melt”), gas and crystals that grow as the temperature of the magma drops during its journey up to Earth’s surface.

When the magma erupts to become a lava flow, it will release the gas (which contains water vapour, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and other compounds) and cool down into a volcanic rock. This rock contains crystals cooled slowly inside the volcano, embedded in a finer rock matrix cooled rapidly at the surface.

Microscope view of lava erupted on October 24 2021 at La Palma, with large colorful crystals in a fine-grained black rock matrix which we analyze via laser. The image is in cross-polarized transmitted light (5mm scale bar). A. MacDonald, Author provided

As a result, volcanic rocks can look a bit like “rocky road” chocolate. The crystals formed in the guts of the volcano are excellent archives of the run-up to eruption. However, the crystals can get in the way when we want to focus on the melt that carries them to the surface, and how the melt properties vary throughout the eruption.

To isolate the melt signal, we used an ultraviolet laser, similar to the ones used for eye surgery, to blast the rock matrix between larger crystals.

We then analyzed the laser-generated particles by mass spectrometry to determine the chemical composition of the volcanic matrix. The method allows for a rapid chemical analysis.

This provides a faster and more detailed measure of melt chemistry and its evolution over time, compared to traditional analysis of the entire rock, or to painstaking separation of matrix and crystal fragments from crushed rock samples. Even if we call the crystals “large”, they are often as small as a grain of salt (or up to a chickpea in size if you are lucky!) and difficult to remove.

A destructive disaster in the Canary Islands

Our study focused on the 2021 eruption at La Palma, the most destructive volcanic eruption on historical record in the Canary Islands.

From September to December 2021, a total of 160 million cubic metres of lava covered more than 12 square kilometers of land. It destroyed more than 1,600 homes, forced the evacuation of more than 7,000 people and generated losses of more than €860 million (AU$1.4 billion).

Drone image of a lava flow from the 2021 La Palma eruption (December 4 2021, houses for scale). Instituto Geologico y Minero de Espana, Author provided

We analyzed lava samples collected systematically by our collaborators in Spain throughout the three months of eruption. These are precious samples as we know their exact eruption day, and many of the sampling sites are now covered by later lavas from the eruption.

Using the laser-powered method, we could see variations in lava chemistry linked to changes in earthquakes and sulphur dioxide emissions, as well as eruption style and the resulting hazards. This included a change from thick lavas that acted as a bulldozer at the start of the eruption, to runny lavas that created rapid lava rivers and lava tunnels later in the eruption.

We also found a key change in lava chemistry about two weeks before the eruption ended, which suggests cooling of the magma due to a dropping magma supply.

Similar changes could be monitored as a signal of eruption wind-down in future eruptions around the world.

Early lavas from the 2021 La Palma eruption were voluminous and blocky, acting as a hot ‘bulldozer’ (September 22 2021, traffic sign for scale). JJ Coello Bravo, Author provided

Forecasting volcanic activity

We cannot prevent volcanoes from erupting, and we cannot yet travel inside them like French sci-fi author Jules Verne once envisioned. But volcano monitoring has improved enormously in the last few decades to allow us to indirectly ‘peek into’ volcanoes and better forecast their activity.

Our work aims to provide a laboratory tool for testing volcanic samples collected during future eruptions. The goal is to read into the evolution of eruptions, to understand why they start and when they will end.

With about 50 volcanoes erupting at any given time around the world, you will soon see another volcano erupting in the news. This time, you can consider the importance of volcano science to improve our understanding of how volcanoes work and what drives them to erupt, to protect the people around them.