At around 8am this morning, Australian time, a van-sized robot weighing just over 1,000kg hit the upper atmosphere of Mars at more than 20,000 km/h, decelerated, deployed a huge parachute while still travelling at supersonic speeds, ditched its heat shield, and then winched itself down on a cable from a rocket-powered jetpack to the dusty surface of the Red Planet.
It's sitting there right now, in an old Martian lake, 200 million kilometers from where you're sitting, a $2.7 billion rover equipped with a plutonium-powered battery and seven of the most advanced scientific instruments ever invented. Attached to its belly is a little helicopter named Ingenuity, which will soon attempt to become the first rotorcraft ever to fly in the skies of a world beyond Earth.
Watching Perseverance arrive this morning, what struck us wasn't the technical prowess, or the mind-boggling statistics, or even the raw emotion on the masked faces of the JPL crew. It was the openness of the endeavor, the willingness of NASA to have its efforts shown to the entire world, in real time, despite a very good chance that something might go wrong (40% of missions to Mars have failed). Can you imagine what that's like, to have one of the most important things you've ever done put under that kind of pressure?
No other country on the planet comes even close to pulling off stuff like this. When it comes to space exploration, America's unique culture of can-do attitude, risk-taking and transparency is a gift to the rest of the world. Sure, the NASA feed had its share of carefully selected mood music and no doubt there was a lot of scrambling off-camera, but the risks were still real. Compared to the carefully managed shots from the UAE and Chinese missions, it was practically a documentary.
Science advances when it's practiced in the open, and when it's shared with as many people as possible. Perseverance, like the other Mars rovers, got its name via a nationwide student competition. The winning moniker was submitted by Alex Mather, at the time a seventh grader from Virginia. Say what you want about the United States; that small detail says a lot about the kind of society that tries to fly helicopters on other planets. It's something to admire, and it gives us a lot of hope.
If you've got three minutes, check out this animation of the landing sequence.
If you've got twenty minutes, watch this video about Perseverance's insane engineering. Also, contact us immediately. If you've got a spare 20 minutes in your workday to watch Youtube then you've obviously figured out some dark secret to modern living and we'd like to know what it is (we ended up watching it during our lunchbreak).
Good News
Another week, another flurry of announcements on electric vehicles. Jaguar says it will stop selling internal combustion engines within the next five years, Land Rover will offer electric version of its vehicles from 2024, and the really big one - Ford will sell only EVs in the United Kingdom and Europe from 2030. That's the largest carmaker yet to pledge all-electric sales in Europe. Reuters
Massive announcement from Maersk, the world's largest shipping line. From 2023, all vessels will be required to use carbon-neutral fuels, such as clean methanol and ammonia “If we don’t do this, ten years from now we risk becoming irrelevant.” This is seven years ahead of their original goal, and places serious pressure on other companies to follow suit. Lloyds List
Colombia has granted legal status to almost two million Venezuelan refugees. The bold humanitarian gesture, made by President Iván Duque last week, gives them temporary protected status for ten years, allowing émigrés to work and access public services such as health and education. In a world where nationalist sentiments have all too often been stoked against refugees and migrants, it's a remarkable example of leadership. Smart economic move too. UNHCR
Russia and the United States have agreed to patrol together to enforce a new maritime pollution agreement in the waters of the Bering Sea. Officially, relations between the two countries are at their worst in more than thirty years; the Arctic though, has a long history of fostering international cooperation, and officials aren't letting geopolitical tensions get in the way. Arctic Today
The American Cancer Society says death rates have fallen again. Its latest figures show a 2.4% decline from 2017 to 2018 – the largest one-year drop ever. Longer term, there's been a 31% fall in mortality rates between 1991 and 2018, translating to almost 3.2 million fewer deaths had rates remained at their peak. Its mostly thanks to declines in the four most common cancers: lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate.
A new study in Denmark has found that less people over the age of 70 are having fewer strokes and fewer people of all ages are dying from the disease. It’s good news for global health; strokes are one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Researchers say the decrease is due to improvements in stroke awareness and a drop in smoking rates. Science Daily
A new law decriminalizing same-sex relations has gone into effect in Angola. It overturns a criminal code that had been in place for 134 years, from when the country was still a colony. Activists have heralded it as “a great step forward” in the fight against state-sponsored discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community in southern Africa. Sahara Reporters
Centuries after they were stolen, the ancestral lands of the American Indian Community in Minneapolis, which includes the site of the U.S. Dakota War in 1862, has been returned to them. Tribal Council members hope it marks the beginning of more efforts to reclaim traditional homelands of Indigenous people. “We are trying to heal ourselves and also we are trying to come back and try to nurture the land and heal the land as well.” CBS Local
People power in Canada has forced the Alberta government to reinstate the 1976 Coal Policy that it revoked last year. The plan had opened up the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to open-pit coal mining, but after sustained opposition from conservationists, country music stars and both rural and urban communities, the government has been forced to do an about-face. The Narwhal
China, the most populated country in the world, registered almost two million less births last year, compared to 2019. This is excellent news for the environment; fewer people means less consumption and less pressure on ecosystems. It's part of a longer term trend too - China's population is now on track to peak by as soon as 2027. CNN
Air pollution is falling across a vast swathe of 15 countries in Africa, from Senegal in the west to South Sudan in the east. It's the result of rapid urbanization and economic development, leading to a significant decrease in fires traditionally used for land management. “As middle and low-income countries grow you often see more emissions. It’s nice to see a decline occurring when you’d expect to see pollution increasing.” NYT
The Mississippi River is the cleanest it's been in more than a century. Recent testing reported a sharp drop in bacteria, most of which stemmed from human and animal waste, with levels at 1% of what they were before the 1980s. Most of the credit goes to the landmark 1972 Clean Water Act, which forced industries to be accountable for waste discharge and banned the disposal of sewage into rivers and creeks. Regulation huh? Who would have thought. Nola
If the state of the world keeps you up at night, you can rest a little easier knowing the ozone layer is recovering faster than previously thought. Between 2012-2017 it looked certain to be delayed when a mysterious increase of an ozone-depleting gas called CFC-11 was traced back to China. But thanks to the country's quick response in reducing those emissions, scientists say the ozone layer is now back on track to heal to pre-1980s levels within the next 50 years. ABC
America has created its 63rd national park: New River Gorge, in southern West Virginia. The new park, covering 72,000 acres of land, and flanking 53 miles of the gorge, now has the same status as iconic places such as Yosemite and Yellowstone. It's the result of a multigenerational effort, started in the mid-twentieth century, to transform a tired industrial area into a national landmark. NYT
Indistinguishable from magic
We are definitely living in the future. US Customs and Border Protection say they scanned more than 23 million people with facial recognition technology in 2020. This technology did not exist four years ago. It's now so deeply embedded in modern life that it barely warrants a mention. Terrifying? Or banal? One Zero
Moore's Law ̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶d̶. Researchers in the UK have created the smallest ever microchips by creating kinks in the structure of graphene. The technology, known as straintronics, creates microchips 100 times smaller than conventional ones. By using nanomaterials rather than electronics, it potentially allows for far more chips inside a given device. Slash Gear
A second endangered species - the black-footed ferret - has been cloned in the United States. On the 10th December 2020, 'Elizabeth Ann' was created from the frozen cells of 'Willa' whose frozen cells have been stored at San Diego Zoo since 1988. Scientists hope this will help overcome the problem of genetic diversity for the existing population, and eventually enable the reestablishment of the species in the wild. USFWS
To round things off, three stories to remind you that science hasn't figured out all the answers yet. There's still so much to discover!
Exhibit 1: Remember the article from a few editions ago about about horizontal gene transfer? If you haven't yet, please go and read it. Your understanding of evolution will change dramatically. Here's an example: the coelacanth, the famous 'living fossil' turns out to be not so fossilized after all. New genetic evidence shows it has undergone hidden, but widespread evolution at a genetic level - by hijacking at least 62 genes from other species. Science Alert
Exhibit 2: Evidence is mounting that plants and animals use magnetic fields to make sense of the world. New research shows that Venus flytraps generate measurable magnetic fields as their leaves snap shut, suggesting some kind of signaling device, while another study has shown that reed warblers use the earth's magnetic field to reorientate themselves when blown off course.
Exhibit 3: A British geologist has accidentally discovered life in a place where it shouldn't exist. After drilling through almost a kilometre of ice in Antarctica to sample sediment on the sea bed, his camera came upon an alien-like sponge and other stalked animals dangling from a rock. They were 250 kilometres away from daylight. "Not to tell life its business, but it’s got no right being there." Wired
Information superhighway
Forget liberal vs. conservative, open vs. closed, or globalists vs. nationalists. Today's most important political coalitions are carbon (fossil fuel-intensive, agro-industrial) versus post-carbon (knowledge intensive, services-led). This is the most useful political binary we've come across in years. Those embedded in the carbon economy quite rationally want to defend that model; those with a spot in the post-carbon economy largely embrace the future. Foreign Policy
Leah Ginnivan's newsletter is honestly one of the best things on the internet. She's a doctor, working in Darwin, Australia, with an extraordinary ability to capture the human experience. The letters, and we use that description intentionally, don't come very often but the wait is always worth it. Each one is a tiny, precious treasure. Please, do yourself a favour and subscribe. Thank us later.
Pallavi Aiyar would rather be a woman in China than in India, because her chances of being healthy and educated would be higher and her likelihood of active agency would be greater. "Chinese women inhabit public spaces in a way that is impossible in most parts of India. They don't walk as though folding themselves inward to be invisible to passing men. They don't avoid eye contact. They ring their bicycle bells loudly." Neoma
Plastic roads. You've heard about them, perhaps you're excited about them. But how viable are they? Turns out, pretty damn viable. India's installed almost 100,000 km, the technology is gaining ground in Europe and Asia, and several countries — South Africa, Vietnam, Mexico, the Philippines, and the United States — have just built their first ones. Thanks to FC subscriber Rebecca Puck Stair for this one. Yale 360
Don't ever say we don't help you keep up with the kids. If you're still wondering what the deal is with TikTok, here's a 10 pack, courtesy of the indispensable Delia Cai. Go deeper with this excellent essay on TikTok Face by Cat Zhang - “her skin is spotless, her make-up neutral, her background wholly nondescript” - and then despair over the fate of humanity with Jia Tolentino's Instagram Face. Yes, we know. Console yourself with a sea shanty.
Humankind
Meet Natsiraishe Maritsa, a teenager from Zimbabwe using taekwondo to help girls in her community fight against the practice of child marriage. Although child marriage before the age of 18 has been banned in Zimbabwe since 2016, the practice persists in rural areas, trapping many girls in a cycle of unplanned pregnancies, violence, and poverty.
The daughter of small-scale farmers, Natsiraishe started practicing martial arts when she was five, and dreamed of becoming an Olympic champion. However, when she started losing friends to abusive marriages from the age of 13, Natsiraishe decided to use her sport to raise awareness about the issue.
Despite limited resources, in 2018 Natsiraishe created a foundation ‘Underaged People’s Auditorium’ and set up a makeshift training ground in her parents’ tiny backyard to rally local girls and former classmates for weekly taekwondo lessons. While the physical practice helped the girls to build self-confidence, it was the discussion group after the training that became the real gamechanger.
Natsiraishe invited her former classmates, some who were mothers, to share stories of the abuse they faced in their child marriages. Moved by the power of such personal stories, some of the younger girls have been inspired to go back to school. To date, Natsiraishe’s foundation has helped 40 teenage mothers and young women.
“The role of teen mothers is usually ignored when people campaign against child marriages,” Natsiraishe says, “The young mothers feel empowered from being able to use their stories to dissuade other girls from falling into the same trap.”
An empowered young woman herself, Natsiraishe still fancies a shot at the Olympics and dreams of joining the Zimbabwe air force as an armament engineer.
That's a wrap for this edition, we're 20 minutes past our deadline. Thank you, as always, for your attention and support.
We'll see you next week.
Much love,
FC HQ
