The buzzy de-extinction company is making headlines again, the Smile spacecraft has been launched to observe Earth’s magnetic shield in action, and a new study has cast doubt on the existence of water vapor plumes on Europa. Also, SpaceX’s Starship V3 flies for the first time. Here are this week’s most interesting science stories.
chicken or artificial egg
Colossal Biosciences, the “de-extinction” biotech company best known for its claims of reviving the dire wolf, announced this week that it has hatched 26 healthy chicks from 3D-printed artificial egg shells. According to the company, this is a step towards its goal of bringing back the giant moa to the South Island.dinornis robustus), a giant bird that has been extinct for about 600 years, and the dodo.
Colossal’s artificial eggshell is made of a semi-permeable silicone-based membrane mesh that allows oxygen to pass through while protecting the internal contents, and a rigid support cup that holds it together. Embryos are taken from eggs laid by a hen in the usual way.
“In the current workflow, scientists examine eggs laid by real chickens within 24 to 48 hours of laying, select viable candidates, and transfer the contents – except the shell – into an artificial egg structure,” Colossal explained in a blog post. “All upstream biology, from fertilization to egg laying, still occurs in a living bird. For extinction applications, the artificial egg is intended as a later-stage incubation vessel, not as a point of genetic intervention.” The moa laid eggs about eight times the size of the emu, so no species alive today can serve as a surrogate for the entire process. Colossal says it is looking at the Nicobar pigeon as a potential surrogate egg-producer for its dodo project, and is considering emu or tinamou for the moa.
Colossal Biosciences
Colossal’s methods and de-extinction goals have received a fair share of critics over the years, many of whom have questioned the purpose of focusing on reviving extinct species when there are so many endangered species today that could benefit from this type of intervention. Colossal says its system can be applied to conservation. And as some scientists argued that Colossal’s dire wolves are not true dire wolves but genetically modified gray wolves, skeptics say the latest announcement should be taken with a grain of salt.
“They may be able to use this technology to help create a genetically modified bird, but it’s just a genetically modified bird. It’s not a moa,” said Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Buffalo. associated Press. “It’s not an artificial egg because you put all the other parts that make it an egg in there. It’s an artificial egg shell,” Lynch said.
Smile spacecraft will study Earth’s ‘invisible shield’
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) this week launched a joint mission to collect the first X-ray observations of Earth’s magnetic shield and study how it reacts to the solar wind. It will also observe the northern lights in the ultraviolet for up to 45 minutes at a time, longer than any other mission. The Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, or SMILE, is equipped with an X-ray camera and an ultraviolet camera as well as a light ion analyzer and magnetometer. It was launched on May 19 from French Guiana aboard a Vega-C rocket and is expected to begin collecting data in July.
“We are going to see something we have never seen before – the Earth’s invisible shield in action,” said ESA Director General Joseph Eschbacher.
“The evidence collected by SMILE will help us better understand planet Earth and our solar system,” said ESA SMILE project scientist Philippe Escobet. “And the science it uncovers will improve our models of Earth’s magnetic environment, which could ultimately help keep our astronauts and space technologies safe for decades to come.”
Clouds of water vapor on Europa? maybe not
A new analysis of Hubble Space Telescope data has scientists questioning previous findings that Jupiter’s moon Europa is spewing plumes of water vapor into space. It has been thought that cracks in Europa’s icy shell may allow water to escape from its subsurface ocean, and in 2014, researchers announced that this indeed appears to be the case. But, after looking at 14 years of Hubble data from its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (HST/STIS), members of the same team now say that earlier conclusion “no longer holds.”
NASA
“The evidence for water vapor plumes on Europa is not as strong as we previously thought,” said Dr. Kurt Rutherford of the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), one of the authors of the 2014 paper. “One of the difficulties in interpreting the data at that time was determining where to place Europa in its context,” Rutherford said. “The way Hubble works has left some uncertainty in terms of placement relative to the center of the image. If Europa’s placement was off by just a pixel or two, it could affect how the data are interpreted.”
In the new study, the researchers looked at Lyman-alpha emission, which is associated with hydrogen atoms. “Our reanalysis reduced our original 99.9 percent confidence in the existence of plumes to less than 90 percent,” said lead author Dr. Lorenz Roth of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. “There is not enough evidence to support the certainty of the claims we made at that time.” He says previous findings may be based on statistical noise.
But it’s still within the realm of possibility that Europa is home to plumes of water vapor, and it won’t be long before we have a better understanding of what’s going on there. In 2024, NASA launches its Europa Clipper mission to study the icy moon. It is expected to reach Jupiter in April 2030 and perform its first Europa flyby the following year.
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